


Cataclysmic Variable Star

by Elldritch



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: AU: Cavalier!Harrow Necromancer!Gideon, But I'm tagging 'Major Character Death' just in case, Canon-Typical Character Deaths, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Slow Burn, Tbh less major-character-death-y than the books themselves, canon-typical suicide references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 77
Words: 144,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26588017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch
Summary: A continuation of the Harrow Nova AU from chapter 40 of Harrow the Ninth
Comments: 524
Kudos: 287





	1. Chapter 1

In the myriadic year of our Lord, the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, our Resurrector, the full-pitying Prime! - the Reverend Daughter Gideon Nonagesimus sat on the sofa in her quarters and watched her cavalier read. She idly extended an arm over her head, stretching the triceps which were still a little sore from her last workout. She’d probably pushed them a touch too hard, but it was so difficult to find the time away from her duties as Reverend Daughter, that she had to make the most out of what time she could steal.

Her cavalier sat very upright in the chair by her dresser, which Gideon knew was less from the habit of good posture, (she could hear Aiglamene’s voice in her head, bemoaning his perpetual slump) and more from the decrepit state of the furniture. Like everything else in the Ninth, it was one breath away from expiring completely. Even Gideon was cautious when sitting in that chair (and caution was not something which came naturally to her), and while Ortus couldn’t match her biceps, he still had the advantage in sheer bulk.

“ _No retainers. No attendants, no domestics,”_ read Ortus Nigenad, folding the paper with obsequious care. “Then I will wait on you alone, my Lady Gideon?” 

“None of that ‘my Lady’, stuff, Ortus. You know it makes me break out in hives. You only need to say that stuff when people are around. And yes, looks like it’ll be just you and me. Won’t that be thrilling for both of us?” About the only consolation Gideon had in this whole mess, was that she knew Ortus would be at least ten times as miserable about it as she was. 

“No Marshal Crux? No Captain Aiglamene?”

“No retainers. No attendants. They’re pretty clear on that front. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“My lady?” Ortus said, in a tone which indicated that it did not, in fact, make him wonder in the slightest. Gideon sighed.

“Cavaliers and necromancers only. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The First House is even more secretive than the Ninth. If they’ve got a bunch of dark, spooky mysteries that only the future lyctors can be allowed to see, then surely they’d invite just the heirs? If that’s not an issue, then why the restriction on bringing anyone else? Personally, I find it suspect.”

Ortus still seemed entirely uninterested in anything other than sitting in her sad, sagging chair, with his sad, sagging face, and sighing. Gideon did her best to be kind to him, but Lord Undying did he make it difficult sometimes.

After a moment, he said abruptly: “Lady, I cannot help you become a Lyctor.”

Maybe he’d been paying more attention to what she’d been saying than she thought. He’d always had a preternatural sense for danger, inasmuch as he contrived to be as far from it as possible at all times.

“I’m not terribly thrilled by the prospect either.”

“Then you agree with me! Good. I thank you for your mercy, Your Grace.”

“Gideon,” Gideon interjected, with little hope that he’d finally listen and drop the stupid titles.

“I cannot represent you in a formal duel, not with the sword, nor the short sword, nor the chain. I cannot stand in a row of cavaliers primary and call myself their peer. The falsehood would crush me. I cannot begin to conceive of it. I will not be able to fight for you, my Lady Gideon.”

Gideon sighed. “Ortus. Come on, I’m not a monster. You’ve known me my whole life. What have I ever done to make you think I’d willingly put you in that position? If anyone wants a duel with the Ninth, I’ll punch them in the face. That should shut them up pretty fast.”

Ortus - sad, placid Ortus - did not even raise an eyebrow at the impropriety she suggested, but merely barrelled forwards, as though he’d rehearsed this speech many times in his head.

She was fairly certain he _had_ rehearsed this conversation in his head - that was just the sort of thing he did, and it was one more reason why they were so ill-suited to each other as to represent a cosmic joke. Gideon suspected many things of being a cosmic joke at her expense. Not least her being named as Reverend Daughter - the only people more dismayed at her position than she was were the Reverend Father and Mother who, bereft of better choices, had spent her whole life trying to mould her into some approximation of dull Ninth House piety, and their daughter who had grown up expecting to hold the title herself, until her utter lack of necromantic aptitude had been revealed.

At the thought of Harrow, Gideon shook her head impatiently. She wasted too much time thinking of the daughter she’d ousted, and it made her cranky. Unfortunately, it was a crankiness she was unwilling to take out on poor Ortus, however tempting it was, or even on Harrow herself - the object of about ninety percent of Gideon’s bad moods - and which would have to wait until she had the privacy to lock herself in a room with a sword, and could conjure herself some bone constructs to beat up.

She glanced at the clock. Evening services would be in a few hours. After that she could sneak away and sacrifice a few hours’ sleep in the hopes of finding some peace. Sleeplessness was not unfamiliar to her - though if she started getting through their slim coffee rations any faster she’d end up having another blazing row with Marshall Crux about spending too much of the Ninth’s meagre treasury on ‘venal indulgences not befitting someone of her status’. Good job he’d never seen the invoices for her magazines.

With a stupendous effort, Gideon dragged her attention back to Ortus’ miserable monotone.

“... It is for my mother’s pride and my House’s scarcity that I call myself a cavalier. I have none of a cavalier’s virtues.”

“I know that, Ortus. I’m really not an idiot, you know.” Ortus cringed at this, and Gideon hurried to reassure him that she’d taken no offence, before he could begin the tiresome process of folding himself into guilty genuflection. She wasn’t sure his knees could take the strain, and she knew her patience couldn’t. “I know that isn’t what you meant, for goodness’ sake please don’t get into a flap.”

Ortus stopped short, having, in fact, clearly started building himself into a tremendous flap.

“You know I wouldn’t take you if I had another option.” It would have been an insult had she said such a thing to anyone else. For Ortus, it was probably the kindest thing anyone had said to him all week, which made Gideon feel sad herself, and tired, and more determined to hold onto the thin thread of her temper.

“Have you not considered…” Ortus began, and Gideon cut him off more harshly than she intended.

“No.”

“But, My Grace… her skill with a sword far exceeds…”

“Nope.”

“She would honour the Ninth…”

“By smothering me in my sleep? I don’t think so. We’ve discussed this before, Ortus. You and Harrow are the only two people in the Ninth who are even remotely close to me in age. At the Reverend Father’s instruction, I must have both a cavalier and a spouse. You’ll understand when I say I would rather drown myself in my own bile than fuck you, which makes you my cavalier by default.”

Damnit. She had lost her temper. Ortus looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be upset that the conversation wasn’t going how he’d planned, relieved at her continuing insistence that the worst she’d ask of him was to take up his sword - not her hand in marriage - or shocked that she had, once again, sullied the sacred position of Reverend Daughter with her foul mouth. 

She sighed. Again. Something about being in a room with Ortus Nigenad seemed to have that effect on her. The truth was, however poor a cavalier he was, she was just as ill-suited to the role of Reverend Daughter. Had she not been literally the only necromancer in the Ninth who was not ninety-five percent osteoporosis, her general demeanor would have ruled her out in a second.

Harrow would have made a great Reverend Daughter. She had just the right kind of stick up her ass…

Her brain, long accustomed to having to hastily stifle thoughts of Harrow’s ass, turned her attention back to the conversation at hand.

“You know, I really thought that she was going to say yes, the last time I proposed,” Gideon mused. “If we married, and produced an heir of our own, then she’d be Reverend Consort, at least. I hoped that - however much she hates me - she’d jump at the chance to do her duty and continue the Tombkeeper line. She’s all about that duty nonsense. Hell, I’d even let her conduct services, once the Reverend Father and Mother shuffle off. Lord knows I’m terrible at it.”

She was still trying to live down the three nuns who had expired of shock when she’d discovered some interesting records of pre-resurrection worship, and tried to incorporate electronically amplified necromantic music into a service. The songs had all been properly pious - she’d checked the lyrics carefully - but she’d still ended up with a month-long vow of silence for it. The only ‘rock’ allowed in the Ninth was the one which was to remain unrolled, covering the entrance of the Locked Tomb.

Ortus didn’t reply to her musings about Harrow. He’d learned quickly enough that the true daughter of the Reverend Mother and Father was the one subject guaranteed to make Gideon viciously snippy. 

Harrow drove Gideon absolutely nuts. She wasn’t sure which of them hated the fact that Gideon had been named Reverend Daughter more, but they'd spent much of their childhoods taking it out on each other _._ If not for a stupid hope that her and Harrow might find some common ground in training together - _hah, what stupid, 7-year old wishful thinking that had been_ \- she never would have picked up a sword, or bullied and blackmailed Aiglamene into showing her how to use it, with the threat that if Aiglamene refused, she’d carry on wielding her sword, just… badly. She’d figured out early that nothing broke Aiglamene’s heart quite the way that a poor stance did.

But, of course, Harrow had only seen it as an attempt to take one more thing away from her. Gideon hadn’t tried to learn the rapier, out of deference to Ortus’ fragile self-esteem, and, honestly, because who would fight with a toothpick when a two-hander was an option? Harrow had still seen it as a deathly insult that Gideon trained with a blade at all. An insult to Harrow herself, who was determined to be the only swordswoman of note in the House, excepting Aiglamene of course, and an insult to the whole Ninth that their heir should think to develop a skill that wasn't directly related to bones.

It had all been downhill from there. Gideon had been only marginally proper at her best. Between sneaking off for training with Aiglamene, and studying _flesh magic,_ of all horrors, she’d been surprised that the Reverend Father and Mother hadn’t given up and just drowned her. In fact, whenever they summoned her to that creepy-ass ceremonial pool tucked away in their chambers, she almost wished that they _would_ drown her. That pool was where they meted out their most vicious punishments, and told their most abominable secrets. The things she’d learned in that ice-cold water…

Oh, Gideon was well practiced at not thinking about things she didn’t want to.

“It’s no good, Ortus. You’re just going to have to come with me to the lyctor trials. I give you my word that I’ll make it as painless as I possibly can. You can sit in our quarters all day and write poetry, if you like.”

“My Lady…” Ortus quavered.

“ _Gideon,”_ Gideon corrected, for the millionth time.

“I am feared for my life!”

“I’ll protect you, Ortus. I already told you - I won’t make you fight in any duels.”

“Not the trials, My Grace. I don’t believe I shall survive long enough to see the shuttle land to collect us!”

“Do you have a sniffle again?” Gideon was rapidly running out of patience for this conversation. She could feel irritation coiling inside her, and knew that if she didn’t let it out soon by smashing some skeletons or doing chin-ups until her arms were too weak to lift so much as a knuckle bone - she was going to say something she’d regret.

“It’s Harrow,” Ortus confessed, wretchedly. “She has gotten into her head the notion that the only way the Reverend Father and Mother will allow her to go with you as cavalier primary is if I am deceased.”

“I mean, probably accurate, but she hates me. I would have thought she’d be counting down the moments until I leave and praying to Anastasia that the shuttle explodes in transit.”

“She is determined to accompany you.”

“Come with me! Why? I mean… I guess there’s something romantic about the the idea of Harrow and I going away together. And it's not like she can avoid me if it's just the two of us! What do you think? If I let her come, do you reckon she’ll marry me then?”

“It is… unseemly to marry one’s cavalier primary.”

“Well, surprise! Unseemly is my middle name.” It was Ortus’ turn to sigh, though he couldn’t contradict her - if there was one thing Gideon Nonagesimus excelled at, it was impropriety. 

“Cheer up, Ortus. I'd never considered Harrow being my cavalier _and_ my wife. That would be perfect! This way you’re off the hook completely.” A thought occurred to Gideon then. “You promise she isn’t planning to murder me the second the shuttle is out of atmosphere and I’ve got no thanergy to draw on?”

Ortus said nothing.

“You’re right,” Gideon concluded. “I’ll take my sword, just in case. False bottom in my trunk should do it. Hey, if Harrow _is_ going to be my cavalier primary, I’ve just thought of the absolute best pun to use in our wedding vows.”

“Puns aren’t exactly… traditional… My Grace.” Ortus pointed out, like the absolute killjoy he was. Gideon ignored him, and left to go find some scrap to start fashioning a false bottom for her trunk, whistling merrily, and mentally drafting wedding vows as she went.


	2. Chapter 2

It said a lot that - in a House famous for not letting a thing go to waste, utilising every last scrap of every resource they had - to the point of using unguents made of deceased eye-jelly, which had given Gideon nightmares for weeks when she’d found out - it was easier to find the scrap materials to fashion a false bottom for her trunk, than it was to find Harrow.

Drearburh wasn’t large. Quite the opposite. It should not have been possible to hide from anyone on the Ninth. Something Gideon knew too well, from her futile attempts to evade Marshall Crux. Gideon didn’t want to send someone to find Harrow. Inevitably, having the disgraced Ninth daughter dragged - usually kicking and screaming - into her presence got things off on rather the wrong foot. Not to mention that the Ninth didn’t have bandages to spare for the injuries Harrow always inflicted on whatever brothers or sisters of the house drew the short straw of fetching her. 

In the end, she’d given Ortus a letter outlining the plan, and what Harrow needed to do, if she decided to go along with it. 

It was written in Gideon’s personal cipher, which only she and Harrow knew - developed when they were young and just learning to write, and had taken to encoding the death threats they exchanged to avoid the missed dinners, beatings, and other sundry punishments they got when either of them was caught writing such things. At least this meant that they didn’t have to fear being found out, even if the letter fell into the wrong hands, as long as Ortus didn’t chicken out of chickening out and confess everything to Pelleamena and Priamhark.

Gideon hoped she would agree, but it would be just like Harrow to want something enough to threaten murder for it, then decide she didn’t want it after all when Gideon tried to hand it to her.

When her sword and her magazines were carefully hidden in her trunk, beneath a false bottom, and piles of dreary robes and drearier paint, Gideon had little left to do but shut herself in her rooms - under the guise of pious contemplation of the great honour awaiting her - and dream of how different things might be, if she and Harrow had some time together during the trials, away from the Ninth House and the Reverend Mother and Father. Maybe they could even grow to be friends. Gideon would like that. She’d never had a friend. She doubted that six-pack abs were central to the whole friendship process, but she did sit-ups while daydreaming, just in case.

It hadn’t always been like this. They’d never been _friendly_ , but they’d grown up in each other’s pockets. Half of Gideon’s baby teeth had been knocked out courtesy of a Harrowhark Nova punch or kick to the face. Of the over-two-hundred bones in the human body, Harrow and Gideon between them had broken at least 50 in their constant warring.

Then, one day when Gideon was 11 and Harrow was 10, Harrow had stolen Samael’s chain from the Anastasian monument. 

This, in itself, would not have been a huge issue. Gideon could have gotten Aiglamene to retroactively sign off on Harrow’s being taught the chain - Ortus had, earlier that same year, contracted what his mother called a near-fatal bout of pneumonia, and Gideon called a sniffle, which then became legitimately life-threatening when his mother had forced him to bed for a month, and his bed sores had become infected. She could have argued that some redundancy on the cavalier front wouldn’t have been a bad plan, and gotten the Reverend Mother and Reverend Father to agree before they even found out Harrow had stolen it.

The problem had been that Gideon had found Harrow using Samael’s chain to try and bludgeon her way into the Locked Tomb. Given that the wards on that thing gave Gideon a migraine if she so much as got within ten feet of it, and Harrow wasn’t a necromancer at all and therefore couldn’t hope to circumvent the necromantic booby traps, there was basically zero chance of this being anything other than a particularly melodramatic suicide attempt.

Gideon, being the stupid eleven year old she’d been, had run straight to the Reverend Father and Mother to tell them _exactly_ what she thought of how they were treating their only real daughter, and didn’t blood mean anything? Just because Harrow wasn’t a necromancer, they acted like she was worthless - like she wasn’t only not the Reverend Daughter, but not their daughter at all.

They’d taken Gideon to the ceremonial pool. They’d explained what Harrow had cost, and how they couldn’t look at her without seeing the two hundred lives they’d sacrificed, and not even gotten a necro out of the deal. Gideon said some things. Gideon said a lot of things. They locked her, still dripping wet, in a freezing cold oss, and by the time she broke out, teeth chattering so hard she thought they might shatter, Harrow was being whipped bloody before the altar for stealing Samael’s chain. 

Gideon was the only one who’d seen her with it. Harrow must have known she’d been the one to tell the Reverend Father and Mother what she’d done, and the hatred in her eyes when Gideon walked in confirmed as much. 

Gideon had intervened. She’d sworn to keep the Ninth’s vile secret, if they’d only stop beating Harrow, who was already barely conscious, blood running in thick rivers down her bare skin, standing through sheer stubbornness alone. Gideon had been terrified, certain that Priamhark would not stop the whipping before Harrow's death wish had been fully granted. By the time she’d sworn the vows to the Reverend Mother’s satisfaction, and had her mouth symbolically sewn shut with a truly horrifying needle and gut-thread, Harrow had been gone. Not that Gideon could have spoken to her anyway; she'd been half-dead of dehydration before the stitches in her lips had been cut loose, two days later.

And from that day, Gideon never could find Harrow. She appeared for meals and services, and Aiglamene said that she never missed a day’s training - except when Gideon got there first, hoping to catch her. Gideon knew that training with Aiglamene was basically the only good thing in Harrow’s life, so she gave up trying to find her there.

On the rare occasions when she had used her authority as Reverend Daughter to command Harrow’s presence, Harrow was dull, far away, as if she attended Gideon in body only, and her mind was elsewhere; she turned off like the old fashioned electric lights in the deepest pit of Drearburh, until Gideon felt that she couldn’t be said to be present at all. It hurt too much to see Harrow as emptily biddable as a bone construct, hate and duty mingling into a malicious, passive obedience when given an order by the Reverend Daughter. If Gideon asked her something, as _Gideon_ , then she could barely get the words out before Harrow fled.

That day outside the Locked Tomb had been the last time Gideon and Harrow had been alone together, as just Gideon and Harrow. These days, Gideon was only ever alone… alone.


	3. Chapter 3

The day came, and the shuttle arrived to take them to the First House. After their trunks had been loaded onto the shuttle with as much pomp and majesty as the Ninth could muster - so, absolutely butt-fuck all - Gideon asked everyone except Ortus to leave, so that she could spend some last minutes in silent contemplation before boarding the shuttle.

Gideon did, in fact, sit in silent contemplation, but the thoughts she contemplated were not about devotion, or pious excitement about the opportunity to do her duty by her House and her Emperor. Inside Gideon’s mind was one thought, on an endless, maddening, loop.

_Would Harrow come?_

It would certainly suck for Ortus if she did not. The second trunk that had been loaded into the shuttle did not contain his belongings, because he had absolutely no intention of leaving the Ninth, but were just packed with more of Gideon’s stupid robes. 

Gideon fussed with the small teeth hung on a cord around her neck, the way the Great Aunts counted their prayer knuckles. The teeth were Gideon’s and Harrow’s baby teeth, and Gideon knew it was weird to keep them - they had been collected and given to her to practice her necromancy with, not to string around her neck in some kind of creepy keepsake, but it was the only thing she had from Harrow anymore, other than a few scars, and in her darkest times, she found them to be both a comfort and a painful reminder of everything she’d lost. She worried at them, the way that one prods with a tongue at a - well - lost tooth. Here at least they were still together, still indivisible; molar pressed to molar, incisor to incisor, in a tragic mockery of the closeness they’d once shared.

Ortus, at least, seemed confident that Harrow would appear. Confident enough that he’d risked the prospect of turning up to the First House without a change of underwear if he was wrong. Gideon was less confident, and her heart was in her throat, beating in frantic misery as the clock ticked down to their departure.

Harrow turned up with less than a minute to spare before the shuttle was due to leave. Whether this was to minimise the chances that they’d be found out in time for her to be dragged back to the Ninth, or simply because she wanted Gideon to suffer, Gideon wasn’t sure. She carried her rapier, and Samael’s chain, and a heartbreakingly small pack over her shoulder, which Gideon knew probably contained her every worldly possession. Perhaps Gideon could work out a way to make a construct which could sew, and get some of her own robes cut down to size - she had higher hopes for their time together on the First than Harrow having to do laundry every other day because she didn’t have enough spare robes - but bare fingerbones struggled to grip something as small as a needle with any dexterity, and it was hard to program a construct to carry out a task she herself didn’t know how to do.

She was distracting herself with minutiae, she knew, but she needed something to keep her from collapsing in exhausted relief when Harrow loaded her pack onto the shuttle, and turned to her with an expression of hateful impatience.

“Are you coming?”

Gideon boarded the shuttle, waving an awkward goodbye to Ortus. He’d be in the shit, she knew, once the Reverend Father and Mother found out what they’d done, and the letter she’d left him with assuring them that all blame was hers would probably do little to mitigate the trouble he was in. The Ninth could be creatively sadistic in their punishments, and Gideon wondered all of a sudden why he’d agreed to help them, when he was doubtless in for far worse a time than he would have been, if he’d come with her. Her offer to leave him to write poetry undisturbed on the First had been genuine. 

For the very first time, it occurred to Gideon that there could be more to Ortus than she’d ever bothered to try and understand. He might have been older than them, might have had eighteen years of growing up amongst other children and teens before they’d all died, all except for him and Gideon, but he’d been alone since then, and he'd known those lost, and must have grieved for them in a way that Gideon - who had only vague memories of noise and bustle from before the _incident_ \- never had. At least she’d had Harrow. Ortus had only his parents - his mother with her fussing and flapping, his father’s bottomless well of disappointment. 

She was avoiding things again. She and Harrow had each settled into seats at either end of the cramped cabin, and now the shuttle’s thrusters turned on, and the hatch closed, the whine of the engines too loud to allow for any conversation as the little craft fought to escape the Ninth’s gravity well. Gideon could sympathise - she knew better than anyone that the Ninth kept what it took.

Once they were in open space, the engine noise cut to a barely-audible hum, and the cabin was uncomfortably quiet. Gideon had never been good with silences. Just another reason why she’d never belong in the overgrown mausoleum of the Ninth.

“We’re outside the planet’s halo,” Gideon said, just to break the suffocating hush which had become even more intolerable as she felt the thanergy drain from her, felt the cold empty press of vacuum all around. 

Harrow looked a little queasy too. Motion sickness, Gideon thought, and almost offered her one of the small peppermint candies she’d stolen from the Great Aunts, but then she remembered how Harrow had always hated them. She thought fondly back to the days when they’d been small enough to have been given a candy before every service, in an attempt to assure their silence. It had been pointless - Harrow didn’t need bribery to be appropriate and respectful and all that nonsense, and those illicit hits of sugar had hindered Gideon's attempts to sit still, rather than helping. Harrow had always given Gideon hers.

Harrow didn’t respond. She was staring pensively out of the small porthole in front of her, though whether that was in genuine appreciation of the view, or just to avoid Gideon’s eyes, Gideon wasn’t sure. 

“If you want to kill me, this is the best chance you’re going to get,” Gideon continued. That, at least, baited Harrow into speech.

“Just because you wouldn’t know duty if it bit you in your stupid face doesn’t mean that everyone is as faithless as you. However much I might hate you, you’re my responsibility now, and I’m not going shame our House by turning up to the First with a dead necromancer.”

“Are _you_ duty?” Gideon quipped, unable to help herself even as she saw Harrow’s mouth twist in distaste, “because the only thing that ever bit me in the face was you.”

“The Reverend Mother and Father should have made you swear a vow of silence before they let you set foot out of the Ninth. Bad enough that we have an _animaphiliac”_ Harrow said the word the way that she would have said ‘pond scum’, or ‘apostate’, or, perhaps, ‘Gideon’, “to represent us. The reputation of the Ninth will be ashes the moment you open your feckless mouth.”

“Hey,” Gideon said, “what I study in my own time is irrelevant. My bone magic is beyond reproach - even the Reverend Mother says so. Why is it anyone’s business but my own if dabble in a little flesh magic on the side? If I didn’t,” Gideon stuck an arm out of her robe and flexed, showing the biceps she’d perfected after years of study, weights, and complex theorems, “you’d miss out on these babies.” 

She kissed her exposed bicep, leaving a black and white smudge. 

“Fuck." She’d messed up her paint. She was always doing that. She stood up and went to rummage in her trunk - plenty of time in transit to fix her face before they arrived.

“You truly can’t go a single minute without disgracing my House, can you?”

“Hey, I never asked for this. You know I _hate_ being the Reverend Daughter.” Gideon knew as soon as the words were out of her mouth that they’d been a mistake. 

“You have been honoured,” Harrow sputtered, so utterly furious that she could barely get the words out, “you have been _blessed_ by ascending to the highest position in the Ninth House. You are on your way to become one of God’s holy lyctors - his Hands and Gestures - and you dare to _complain?_ You took everything from me - my parents, my position, even my _name_! You have everything - _everything -_ that I have ever wanted, and you don’t even want it! I will do my duty. I will be your cavalier, and I will honour my House, and I will afford you every dignity and respect due to the Reverend Daughter, but I will never respect _you,_ Gideon, and I will never, ever stop hating you.”

Well, that could have gone better, but at least Harrow hadn’t actually tried to murder her. Gideon could work with that.


	4. Chapter 4

Gideon was starting to feel fidgety. As if the oppressive silence wasn’t bad enough - Harrow had not deigned to utter so much as another syllable, no matter how Gideon had tried to coax her into conversation - the lack of thanergy was wearing on her more by the second. She almost wished she’d brought the recommended parcel of grave dirt with her, but in her comics it was only the chickenshit necromancers that travelled with grave dirt.

They’d been in orbit around the First House for what felt like ages, the blue-green globe briefly visible before Harrow had slammed the shutter closed over the porthole. Gideon would never admit it, but she was glad Harrow had - the light had been blinding, and Gideon still had splotchy red afterimages dancing in her vision. If Harrow had been similarly affected, she said nothing, and merely wrapped a length of voile around her eyes as a makeshift veil.

In a gesture that was clearly grudging, Harrow held out a second piece of fabric to Gideon, but Gideon had no intentions of walking around in a veil like some sort of _nun_ \- something which would give entirely the wrong impression if any of the other House heirs or cavaliers happened to be hot - but this reminded her that she had not come unprepared. She fished around in an inner pocket of her robes, and pulled out the mirrored sunglasses she’d found in one of the niches. 

“What do you think?” she asked Harrow, knowing that she was setting herself up to be insulted, but somehow unable to stop repeating this endless cycle of appeal and rejection with the only living person who’d ever been important to her.

“I think that you are an embarrassment. No wonder they haven’t actually let us land.”

Okay, so it wasn’t just Gideon who was feeling antsy about the delay. The shuttle was being remotely piloted, but there was a button to press to talk to the pilot, and Gideon did this now. 

“Do you know why we’ve been in orbit so long?” she asked. 

“They’re just scanning your shuttle, Your Grace. We’ll land as soon as we have clearance.”

“Do scans normally take this long?” Gideon wondered aloud.

“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, Your Grace. The shuttles from the Third and Seventh have also been held up, so it may be a technical issue. Oh, look, the Third is just breaking orbit now; I’m sure we’ll be down in no time.”

It wasn’t ‘no time’, but a few minutes later, the shuttle from the Seventh disappeared from sight, presumably to touch down on the planet, and a few more minutes after that, they were heading in for landing too. As soon as they entered the atmosphere, thanergy hit Gideon like a fist to the face. She thought at first that it was just the sudden shock of having access at all, after the void of empty space, but it was more than that. The thanergy on the First was remarkably heady, even before they'd gotten anywhere near the ground. Gideon couldn't wait to see what she could do with it. When they touched down, Gideon sighed, and pulled her hood up over her head. If she didn’t want to antagonise Harrow even further, she had to at least try to make an appropriate Ninth impression. 

As it turned out, her first impressions didn’t count for much. They’d been the last to land, and most of the other Houses were already on their way inside, trailed by some seriously fancy-ass skeleton constructs carrying their luggage, so no one was actually looking their way when Gideon emerged from the shuttle, Harrow close behind.

Gideon, who discovered a previously unrecognised skill to instantly pick out the hottest girl in any crowd (something she’d never before had opportunity to do, since the Ninth wasn’t big on either crowds or hot girls), noticed with interest that amongst all the pairs there was one group of three. A stiff-looking cavalier who probably got through hair gel faster than the Ninth got through sacramental paint, a bleached, twiggy looking blonde, and the new love of Gideon’s life, a statuesque, golden-haired bombshell.

Gideon only realised she’d stopped in her tracks at an acerbic hiss from Harrow - who had been a proper step behind her, and to the side, but had actually managed to walk ahead of Gideon before realising that her necromancer had stopped. Gideon did her best to regain her composure, following Harrow and preparing herself to greet the little priest who was running over to them.

He’d been attending to the next shuttle over, whose occupant appeared to have collapsed just steps from the hatch, and was now being pulled to her feet by the hulking mountain man who must have been her cavalier, attended by another priest with a long, salt and pepper plait.

Gideon almost went over herself, to try and help the fallen necromancer - for she was obviously the necromancer. Seventh House, from the colour of her frothy dress - but something about the cavalier made her uneasy, and anyway, the girl was back on her feet now, and the last thing Gideon needed was another distraction - no matter how cute, in a sickly way, the Seventh necro was, now that she was upright and Gideon could see her face. 

“Hail to the Lord Over the River,” quavered the little priest, “And welcome to his House! Blessed Lady of the Ninth, the Reverend Daughter.” The priest took Harrow’s hand, and Gideon could see she was too numb with shock to resist, her fingers limp in the priest's enthusiastic grasp. Gideon cursed herself for getting distracted and letting Harrow walk ahead - with Harrow’s size, and general… well… Harrowness, Gideon could instantly see how the priest had mistakenly assumed that _she_ was the Ninth House necromancer; the rapier belted at her waist was easy to overlook, as was Samael’s chain - both blending in to the greater blackness of Harrow’s robes. 

Gideon stepped in, hastily, half-convinced that she was about to witness a murder, but Harrow didn’t react to the priest’s mistake. She didn’t move. Gideon wasn’t sure she was actually breathing.

“Actually, that would be me. I’m a necromancer. She’s the cavalier. I mean, um, I’m the Reverend Daughter.”

“I see,” said the priest, letting go of Harrow’s hand to take the one which Gideon extended. He gave Gideon a long and uncomfortably searching look, before continuing, as brightly as before “Welcome to you, then, Reverend Daughter. The Ninth has not visited the First House for most of this myriad! But your cavalier is not Ortus Nigenad.”

“Ah… no. Ortus Nigenad has…” Gideon floundered. What was an appropriate, Reverend-Daughterly way to say that her appointed cavalier primary would rather stab himself with a rapier than wield one?

Harrow stepped in, saving Gideon from whatever verbal faux pas she had inevitably been about to commit.

“Ortus Nigenad has abdicated his his post. I have taken his place as Cavalier Primary. I am Harrowhark the Ninth.”

Gideon saw the little priest’s eyes light up with interest at the - _hark_ and knew what it must have cost Harrow to give her full name that way. She knew how bitterly Harrow resented any reminder of her parentage, her heritage, and the expectations she failed to live up to just by being herself.

“Then welcome to the Lady Nonagesimus, and to Harrowhark the Ninth. I am sure you will wish to take a moment to pray,”

 _Oh shit_ , thought Gideon, who had in fact not given the slightest thought to such a thing.

“I know yours is a House of deep faith. Once you have finished your prayers,” he continued, effervescently, “you must come into the sanctum and be honoured. I am a keeper of the First House, and a servant to the Necrolord Highest, and you must call me _Teacher_ ; not due to my own merits of learning, but because I stand in the stead of the merciful God Above Death, and I live in hope that one day you will call him _Teacher…_ ”

 _If I have anything to say about it,_ Gideon thought, _I won’t be calling him anything at all. But I’ll milk this little holiday for all I can before they pack me off back to Drearburh._

“And may you call him _Master,_ too, and may I call you then _Gideon the First!_ Be at rest, Lady Nonagesimus; be at rest, Harrowhark the Ninth.”

Harrow seemed to shrink into herself every time Teacher used her full title, and Gideon made a mental note to take him aside, when she had the chance, and request just a smidge less formality. She’d much rather be just ‘Gideon’, anyway. Perhaps she could pass it off as some sort of Ninth House humility bollocks?

Gideon kneeled, and tried to look like she was praying, grateful for the mirrored lenses of her awesome sunglasses, which allowed her to watch the other pairs unobserved.

The Second she identified immediately, from the stiff, regimented steps they took which seemed to scream _even our underwear is starched._ Gideon had once entertained dreams of running away to join the cohort, but one look at those two told her that she’d have been as much of a fuckup there as she was in the Ninth.

The shuttle next to them with the fainting necro and the creepy cavalier were the Seventh. The pairs she assumed to be the Fourth and Fifth were already disappearing inside. The Fourth were either very short, or horrifically young - Gideon was going to bet on young, given the way the older Fifth House pair seemed to hover over them. She was sure she’d read somewhere that those Houses were close. 

When she spotted the Eighth, she was surprised she hadn’t seen them from orbit. Their robes were painfully white, and the necromancer could have put Harrow’s Great Aunts to shame with his sour face. It took her a moment to realise that he was young - probably younger than Gideon herself, because the expression on his face made him ancient. 

The Sixth she almost didn’t see at all - their House greys did an excellent job of making them disappear into the background. As someone who’d spent a decent portion of her life wishing she was less striking, because it was _so_ much easier to get into the really _epic_ mischief when no one noticed you - Gideon knew better than to underestimate anyone who was that good at blending in.

Which meant that the triad must be the Third House - appropriate she supposed. Gideon wracked her brain, trying to remember anything at all about the Third - there must be something she could think of to strike up a conversation with the hot blonde - who Gideon now saw, incredulously, must actually be the sister of the other Ninth girl. In fact, their features were similar enough that she was willing to bet they were actually twins.

Well, no points for guessing which one was the evil twin. Gideon made a note to watch her back - she hadn’t even officially met either of them just yet, but she was already willing to bet that the scrawny twin would murder anyone who got too close to her sister. She just had that murdery vibe.

Well, that probably constituted an appropriate length of ‘prayer’. Gideon stood, and followed the other Houses inside.


	5. Chapter 5

They were led into a huge atrium filled with plush couches and padded benches. The covers were cracked, and the stuffing leaking out, and some of the other houses looked a little dubiously at them before sitting carefully. Gideon was accustomed to the Ninth House, where the furniture was not just hopelessly decrepit but also spartan as fuck, so she sank into the nearest couch with pure, animal bliss. 

_Holy shit_ but she’d never been this comfortable. She decided on the spot to have every single chair in the Ninth House burned for ass crimes when she got home. Harrow, of course, didn’t sit, but stood stiffly next to the couch, shooting Gideon a disapproving glare through her veil. Gideon hoped that if anyone happened to be watching them, the combination of face paint and Harrow’s stupid fussy veil made her face unreadable to anyone who didn’t have Gideon’s practice in assessing the moods of skulls, or it was going to become obvious pretty quickly that Something Was Up in the Ninth House, and Gideon and Harrow were not properly bonded as a cav and necro should be.

The only things spoiling what was shaping up to be possibly the best day of Gideon’s life at this point, were Harrow’s stupid, hateful little face glaring at her, and the vaguely unsettling _wetness_ of Canaan house. Gideon had noticed on her way in that the huge landing field was bordered by a just incomprehensible amount of water, so much that even the air smelled of salt spray. Even now they were inside the decaying palace, Gideon felt that she was breathing as much water as air, and every available surface - barring the central seating area they now occupied, which smelled distinctly of astringent cleaning fluids - was absolutely covered in vines and mosses and wet black moulds. 

Gideon, who had grown up in the desiccated Ninth, where water was rationed, and dead things dried out and crumbled before they ever had the chance to rot, had only ever been familiar with water of any quantity in one context, and not thinking about the Reverend Mother and Father’s awful, secret, ceremonial pool, and the things which happened there, was basically Gideon’s full time job. 

Being here where the salt water was inescapable, was seriously eroding Gideon’s ability to repress all the things which she badly needed to keep repressing, if she wasn’t going to start smashing things and screaming.

More skeleton constructs were circulating, handing out small, steaming cups of something. Harrow took the cup she was offered, sniffed delicately, wrinkled her painted nose in distaste, and slyly abandoned the beverage on the nearest available flat surface.

For reasons which were about nine tenths contrariness, Gideon knocked hers back, and immediately regretted it as she felt her throat blister with some pretty nasty burns. Trying keep her choking splutters to a subtle, unobtrusive, level, Gideon quickly skinned over the abused tissues with flesh magic.

 _Hah,_ she thought, _there’s more to life than bones, Nova._

Harrow’s glare became even more withering, if such a thing was actually possible, but Gideon was well versed in ignoring any admonishment that didn’t end up with her bleeding (and, to be fair, she was pretty good at ignoring even those). It wasn’t like it had been Gideon’s _fault…_ whose dumb idea had it even been to hand out cups of boiling plant water? People were obviously going to get burned.

Gideon studiously failed to notice that no one else had, in fact, seemed to have any difficulty with the drinks, which most of the assembled seemed to be sipping with appropriate caution, and even some enjoyment. When the room was silent of even the quiet, wet sounds of sipping, and the clack of bone feet on marble floor, one of the priests raised their thin, reedy voice, and said: 

“Now let us pray for the lord of that which was destroyed, remembering the abundance of his pity, his power, and his love.”

It was a prayer Gideon recognised, but only vaguely, from a dusty old book she’d read once. It was not a prayer which was in common, or even uncommon, usage on the Ninth. The way that almost everyone in the room joined in seamlessly was a final confirmation, if Gideon had needed it, that the creepy tomb-worship of the Ninth House was markedly different from the faith practised elsewhere in the Nine Houses. Aside from Gideon and Harrow, the only people who stayed silent were the creepy Third twin, and the Seventh’s awful cav. Maybe his silence should have endeared him to Gideon, who enjoyed prayer about as much as she would enjoy having her fingernails pulled off, but he was too still, too quiet, in a way which Gideon found reminiscent of a corpse. The way he was standing, Gideon couldn't even see him breathing.

His necromancer, the sickly girl, turned around and looked at Gideon with the slightest crease of a frown between her delicate brows. Before Gideon could stare at her too long, the cavalier next to her took a deep breath and shifted his weight from one foot to the other in a bored fidget, and the movement distracted her. When she looked back at the necromancer, she was once again facing front.

The prayer had ended before Gideon had the chance to think too much about that odd little interaction, and then Teacher said the worst thing he possibly could have. 

“And perhaps the devout of the Locked Tomb will favour us with their intercession?”

Everyone’s heads twisted their way, and Gideon froze, mind going blank. _Shit._ It wasn’t like she hadn’t chanted the stupid thing three times a day at services, every day since she’d been named Reverend Daughter (aside from those brief reprieves when she’d done something awful enough to be set a vow of silence as penance).

Without missing a beat, and in a voice as chill and implacable as the Locked Tomb itself, Harrow intoned “I pray the tomb is shut forever. I pray the rock is never rolled away…” which was enough to kick-start Gideon’s brain, and she joined in after the first few words. Better late than never, eh? The almost-imperceptible narrowing of Harrow’s downcast eyes told Gideon that she didn’t agree, but whatever. Gideon was doing her best, and if the Ninth had wanted better, then they shouldn’t have made her the Reverend Daughter in the first place.

When they had finished - their last words in unfaltering lock-step unison even if the start had been a tad ragged - the three priests looked as pleased as anything, which was a stark contrast to the other faces in the room which ranged from blank boredom - the Seventh cav - to outright murderous hostility - the Eighth necro.

“Just as it always was,” sighed one of the priests. Gideon wasn’t sure which; she hadn’t been looking, and they all spoke with the same wistful, aged croak.

“Continuity is a marvellous thing,” agreed the priest with the salt-and-pepper plait. 

Teacher said: “Now I’ll welcome you to Canaan House. Will someone bring me the box?”

A skeleton clattered its way over to him with a small wooden chest about the size of two hands laid on top of each other. Its footsteps were noisy in the hushed room, and if Gideon hadn’t known better, she’d have said that it walked with apologetic cringing over the racket. But no one in the universe had ever been bored enough to program a construct to do that, so she dismissed the notion as a product of space exposure and overstimulation. If the couches were this comfy, she thought with a sudden stab of anticipatory weariness, she’d bet the beds were _amazing,_ and at that moment, she’d have willingly cut off one of her own thumbs for a nap.

The tedious little ritual which followed, where each cavalier was called in turn to have gleefully bestowed upon them what looked like nothing more exciting than a little metal ring, did little to keep Gideon from her tiredness, and it was a struggle to keep her eyes open. When, at last, Teacher called _Harrowhark the Ninth_ , she was barely alert enough to notice Harrow’s miserable lip-curl at the latest repetition of her full title.

When she returned to Gideon’s side, Harrow grudgingly proffered the ring to Gideon, but Gideon shrugged and waved it away. If it had been meant for her, then why would Teacher have given it to Harrow? 

She almost spoke up to ask what it was, but no one else had, and, well, it was Harrow’s problem now, so what did Gideon care?

“Now,” Teacher said, and Gideon’s brief moment of hope that they were about to be dismissed was crushed when he continued, “the tenets of the First House, and the grief of the King Undying.”

 _For fuck’s sake. They couldn’t have put all this in a memo?_ Gideon stifled a yawn, and shifted in her seat, settling in for what was undoubtedly going to be a very long and very boring speech.

It was certainly boring. Gideon drifted in and out, a bit, too used to automatically filtering out reedy, aged declamations to find it easy to focus on this one, but she did her very best to at least pay attention when a general straightening of backs and pricking of ears told her that he was finally getting to something approximating a point.

“To practical matters. Your every need will be met here. You will be given your own rooms, and will be waited on by the servants. There is space in abundance. Any chambers not given to others may be used as you will for your studies and your sitting-rooms, and you have the run of all open spaces and the use of all books.”

 _Whoop de do,_ thought Gideon, who did not have it in her to get excited about books in that moment, even though the Fifth House necromancer looked like she was about to vibrate out of her seat with excitement, and even the Sixth showed an understated but noticeable enthusiasm.

“We live as penitents do - simple food, no letters, no visits.” _No change there then_ , Gideon thought. “You shall never use a communication network. It is not allowed in this place.”

Now, there was something to get excited about. No letters, no visits, no communication network all neatly added up to absolutely zero possibility that anyone from the Ninth could ruin her stay here with their incessant nagging. She cast a glance to the side where Harrow was evidently paying far more attention than she was. Well, anyone _else_ from the Ninth at least.

“Now that you are here,” Teacher continued, “you must understand that you are here until we send you home, or until you succeed.” Better and better. “We hope that you will be too busy to be lonely or bored. As for your instruction here, this is what the First House asks of you.”

Gideon braced herself, preparing for the inevitable other shoe to drop. She had no doubt she’d be kept too busy to so much as sneeze. Still, she could tolerate even days of _Introduction to Bones,_ and _Skeleton Analysis,_ and _History of Some Blood,_ if it meant getting away from the Ninth. Maybe she’d get lucky and there’d be the odd session of _Swords,_ or even _Swords II._

“We ask,” continued Teacher, “that you never open a locked door unless you have permission.”

Everyone waited, and nothing happened. Teacher smiled beneficently at the assembled crowd, apparently having nothing else to say. All around the room, everyone who had been waiting with breathless excitement for _Tomb Studies_ and _Tendons 101_ wilted with disappointment. No one moved from their seats.

“That’s it,” said Teacher, helpfully, and Gideon didn’t know how to react. This was too good to be true! Literally nothing this amazing had ever happened to her, in her entire life, and she had no frame of reference for how to deal with actual good news.

The obnoxious cavalier of the Third House raised a hand and ventured in a tone which sat perfectly in the overlap between dismayed and prissy, “So what is the training, then - how to attain Lyctorhood?”

Teacher looked at them again. “Well, _I_ don’t know,” he said. “You’re the ones who will ascend to Lyctor, not me. I am certain that the way will become clear to you without any input from us. Why, who are we to teach the first after the King Undying?”

Gideon almost laughed out loud, but stifled the urge in time. This was perfect! With instructions this vague, absolutely no one could blame her if she achieved nothing. 

Teacher smiled, and added, “Welcome to Canaan House!” and Gideon got the impression that she was the only one of the assembled heirs and cavaliers who smiled back at him with genuine happiness.

Best holiday ever.


	6. Chapter 6

They’d barely entered the rooms set aside for them, with Harrow’s pack and Gideon’s trunks already delivered to what turned out to be quite a substantial suite, before Harrow rummaged in her pack, pulled out a book and a pen, and left again without saying a word.

Things with Harrow were clearly already going _great_ , but Gideon was too excited by the prospect of so much free time to be too upset by Harrow’s behaviour. 

Though, that book had been chunky, and represented a decent portion of the volume in Harrow’s packs - Gideon would have to severely downgrade her estimates of the length of time Harrow would be able go without doing laundry… but it sounded like the laundry would be sorted out for them anyway, so Gideon decided not to worry about this. 

The bed frame was _huge_ … like, at least six times the size of her cot in the Ninth House, and it was absolutely piled with nonsense. The mattress was, like, a whole _skull_ deep, and there were _multiple_ pillows that were all almost as plush as the mattress. 

The blanket was seriously weird. It wasn’t woven at all, but more like a cloth bag, stuffed with some sort of soft particulate material, as lightweight and airy as ethmoid bones. The bed called to her… she was exhausted, and even through the sunglasses her eyes ached from all the bright light, and the thanergy in this place… she’d never felt anything like it! She felt like she was back on a shuttle, aiming for escape velocity from a far more substantial gravity well than the Ninth’s, and she was riding _in_ the thrusters. The whole building was absolutely boiling over with power, and not the tame, domesticated stuff that she was used to, the result of aged nuns slipping gently into a gratefully anticipated death. This was fierce, and hot, and… almost violent. 

Gideon wondered whether this was what the thanergy burst had felt like, when Pelleamena and Priamhark had killed all the Ninth’s children, but she shut that thought down _hard._ She was here to get away from the Ninth, not to dwell on its atrocities.

Reluctantly, Gideon decided that she’d rest better once she’d spoken to Teacher, so she backtracked to the large atrium where she’d last seen him, and found that he was still there, talking to one of the other priests. Gideon overheard the other priest saying with some consternation: ”... Both necromancers. They confirmed…” but then the priest looked up and saw her, and stopped talking. Teacher followed the other priest’s eyeline, and his face broke into the same delighted smile he’d given them earlier when he spotted Gideon.

“Ah, Reverend Daughter!” he exclaimed, “the rooms were to your satisfaction, I hope? No problems?”

“Uh, no, the rooms were great, actually. I just wondered if I could have a quick word?”

“For the Lady of the Ninth, anything,” he said, with a chivalrous bow which he pulled off surprisingly smoothly, given that he was evidently quite as ancient as any Ninth House crone. “Shall we go to my study?”

“Sure.” Gideon followed Teacher to a comfortable little room with a couple of chairs, and a low table. It was the dimmest, and driest room she’d found in Canaan House so far - not that she’d had opportunity to explore much yet - but it was a blessed relief to smell the familiar scents of dust and dry leather, and slip her sunglasses back into her pocket. 

Teacher met her gaze, and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“That is a most _unusual_ eye colour, Reverend Daughter. Most unusual indeed! Recessive, I believe? Is it common on the Ninth?”

Gideon, who had done plenty of research over the years, trying to work out something about her origins and come up with jack shit, shook her head ruefully.

“Not common at all, actually. Just me.”

“Fascinating! Your parents were pilgrims? From the Third, perhaps - I know the red hair at least is common there.”

“I’m actually… not sure.” Gideon was surprised how much it hurt to admit this. The Ninth had stopped accepting pilgrims and penitents so long ago Gideon couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone new, so she’d never had to actually explain her situation to anyone before. “I was an orphan.”

“Ah, poor child.” Teacher looked genuinely sad for her, and Gideon had a stupid, momentary urge to confess everything to him, her whole sad, dismal life, but she squashed it right down. 

“Look,” she said, “about all the ‘Reverend Daughter’ and ‘Harrowhark the First’ stuff - we’re pretty, um, humble, on the Ninth, so you don’t have to use our titles all the time. In fact, I think we’d both be more comfortable with just ‘Gideon’ and ‘Harrow’, if that’s okay?”

“Of course, of course!” he said, affably. “We want you to feel right at home here! Have you had chance to meet any of the other Houses yet? It’s just so wonderful having you all together for the first time in almost a myriad.” He actually clapped. With delight. Gideon had never seen someone sincerely do that before. 

“Not yet. We’re, uh, just settling in.”

“Excellent! Well, I shan’t keep you from getting comfortable, but please don’t hesitate to come and see me, if there’s anything at all you want to ask. I am at your disposal, Lady… _Gideon.”_

“Great, thanks.” Gideon stood to leave, when Teacher surprised her by taking her hand.

“ _Anything at all_ you want to ask,” he repeated, winking at her significantly in a way she might have found suggestive if he had not been a) a priest, and b) about a billion years old. As it was, her mind searched for less disturbing conclusions and - surprisingly, given how befuddled she was with tiredness - she found one.

“Uh, while I’m here, then, I guess… _are_ there any locked rooms you can give me permission to go into?” Gideon had no interest in becoming a lyctor, but she had plenty of interest in being nosy, so she figured, what was the harm in asking?

Teacher grinned so widely that Gideon was slightly worried he might pull something, and reached into a pocket of his robe, handing her a small, shabby, unremarkable key.

“The Ninth always has been full of surprises!” he said, and he was so gleeful it was practically a cackle. Then, abruptly, he sobered. “This is the only key that I have the authority to give you. It opens the hatch on the lower level of Canaan House. I must warn you…” Gideon hadn’t even noticed that he still held her hand. Now he squeezed it with surprising strength. “Down there resides the sum of all necromantic transgression. The unperceivable howl of ten thousand million unfed ghosts who will hear each echoed footstep as defilement. They would not even be satisfied if they tore you apart. The space beyond that door is profoundly haunted in ways I cannot say, and by means you won’t understand; and you might die by violence, or you may simply lose your soul.”

As someone who had lived their whole life upstairs from the Locked Tomb, Teacher’s dire proclamation probably didn’t have quite the impact on Gideon that it should. In fact, she found that she was intrigued in spite of herself - until now, the _sum of all necromantic transgression_ in her life had been… well… had been Harrow. 

Part of her wondered whether - if she found something worse, through the hatch, whether it might heal something in Harrow to have her conception put into perspective. Though, the idea of something worse than mass child-murder was something she did not want to consider. Gideon had never blamed Harrow for how she was born - how could she? Harrow had never had a say in it. They’d never really discussed it - hadn’t had the opportunity, since the day Gideon had been told Harrow’s secret had also been the day that Harrow had decided never to speak to Gideon again, but Gideon knew Harrow well enough to guess that it bothered her. Harrow always was taking responsibility for things that weren’t her fault; the complete opposite to Gideon, who was piled down with so much responsibility that she’d never asked for, didn’t want, and itched to shirk.

Gideon’s mind was wandering more than she typically allowed it to. Case in point, she was thinking about _Harrow,_ which is something she did as little as possible. It was definitely time to sleep. Teacher still looked troubled, and sad, as if he hadn’t really wanted to give her the key, however initially proud he’d seemed that she’d asked, so she flashed him what she thought was a reassuringly confident grin.

“Well, surprise! _Ghosts and you might die_ is my middle name.”

Then, she swept quickly out, before she could see Teacher’s reaction to what was - she realised - an entirely un-Ninth thing to say.

Well, it would have happened sooner or later. There was no way that she’d have been able to maintain the illusion of being a proper Black Vestal indefinitely. With only the faintest chagrin at having broken character so quickly, Gideon went back to the Ninth quarters, and climbed straight into bed, without so much as taking off her robe, or paint.


	7. Chapter 7

Gideon woke to an unfamiliar ceiling, a fuzzy taste on her tongue, and the unsettling smell of mould. Worse, when she opened her eyes, Harrow was standing there, staring critically at her. 

“Gah,” Gideon said, articulately, not completely certain that she wasn’t still asleep and having a very creepy dream.

“You have been asleep for _twelve hours_.” Harrow said, icily.

“Tell me you haven’t been watching me the whole time.” The thought of Harrow standing over her for hours, while she slept on, oblivious, and entirely vulnerable to whatever violence Harrow decided to commit - it just didn’t bear thinking about. Unfortunately for Gideon’s fragile peace of mind, Harrow didn’t confirm or deny this.

“You’re wasting time. Get out of bed you indolent, laggardly, shiftless waste of protein!”

“Find a thesaurus in the library did you?” Then, Harrow’s words finally filtered through her half-awake brain. “Shit, twelve hours?”

“Yes,” Harrow snipped, appearing faintly mollified by the fact that Gideon seemed as upset about her late start as Harrow was.

“Fuck, did I miss breakfast?” Gideon swung out of the bed in a rush, stomach already starting to grumble in protest at the prospect of a missed meal. Gideon’s growling stomach was drowned out by Harrow’s quickly-stifled howl of frustration.

“Breakfast! You’re worried about filling your stomach when you should be taking your first steps towards ascension, for the glory of God and the Ninth House?” She sounded furious, which was to be expected from Harrow, and incredulous, which was less expected. Harrow being incredulous implied a level of surprise and disappointment that Gideon thought they’d moved beyond long ago.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” Gideon wasn’t sure that this was a universal rule, but for someone who was never guaranteed any later meals, often managing to screw up badly enough by lunch, or at least dinner, to be assigned fasting as penance, breakfast was all-important.

“Meals are not important at all! Sleep is not important! You are not here to laze around!”

“Actually, that’s exactly why I’m here. I have no intention of becoming a lyctor, I just wanted a break from the Ninth.”

Gideon wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Harrow speechless before. She used the brief respite from being yelled at to pull on her boots, and check her face in the mirror. Her paint was smudged on the side of her face she’d slept on, but it wasn’t too bad, and Gideon was too hungry to bother doing anything about it. With her sunglasses on and her hood up, she doubted anyone except Harrow would even notice. When Harrow still hadn’t responded, Gideon debated the merits of ducking out for breakfast while she had the chance - surely Harrow wouldn’t yell at her in the halls, where one of the other Houses might hear them? Gideon wasn’t a _coward_ , but she was very hungry.

She decided to risk it, and dashed out of the door while Harrow still stood in appalled silence. She made it out into the hallway unmolested, which boded well for her prospects of breakfast, however, she also heard Harrow’s irritated stomping following her, which boded less well. 

If Harrow wanted to rake her over the coals, then she could damn well do it while Gideon ate, she decided. The sleep had been refreshing, but even though she’d only been awake a couple of minutes, the seethe of white-hot thanergetic energy all around her was already becoming oppressive. Until she adjusted to both how lively, and how wildly abundant the thanergy was here on the First, she really didn’t have the spare patience or cognitive resources to deal gracefully with any other irritants, even ones as familiar as hunger, or Harrow. 

She stalked down the halls, with Harrow following silently. Gideon didn’t turn around, but she’d have bet her life that Harrow was maintaining the proper cavalier’s position, half a step behind her, because of course Harrow would care about that sort of shit even when they were completely alone with no one around! 

At least Harrow could have no complaints about her general demeanour this morning - it might have just been low blood sugar, but she was in the sort of mood where it would take _very little_ to push her into an uncontrollable fit of temper - with her hood up and her (mostly) painted face fixed in a forbidding scowl, she was sure she looked completely the part of an awful Black Vestal. 

She easily found her way back to the atrium, and once there, she followed her nose, relieved that the wafting smells of food probably indicated that she had not, in fact, missed breakfast - or that if she had, she’d slept straight through to lunch. 

The eating hall, which was horrifically brightly lit - the ceiling being made of glass, where there was ceiling at all, many of the panels having shattered and the empty holes covered in netting - was also completely unoccupied, barring a few skeleton constructs cleaning tables and mopping the floor. 

Gideon sat at the first table she came to, and before long, a skeleton had placed a steaming bowl of sour green soup, and a huge hunk of bread on the table in front of her. She got busy eating, noting with a silent chuckle the way another skeleton hovered with a second bowl of soup, clearly unsure how to proceed when Harrow didn’t sit to eat, and Gideon took a few seconds to enjoy watching the awkward semi-dance as Harrow tried to refuse the soup without deigning to acknowledge the skeleton or shift from her appointed spot to the side of Gideon’s chair, before Gideon took pity on the skeleton, and took the bowl from its hands, reasoning that double breakfast sounded like just what she needed.

“Thanks,” she muttered, automatically, and again, the general weirdness of the First House must have been getting to her, because she could have sworn she saw the construct nod, slightly, as if in acknowledgement of her thanks.

“Tell me you are not so addled as to be talking to a _construct.”_ Harrow hissed in Gideon’s ear.

“Constructs are better company than you are, _Nova,_ ” Gideon didn’t use Harrow’s house name often, it being something of a sore point that she’d been born Nonagesimus, but had the name stripped from her when Gideon had become Reverend Daughter in her place, but Gideon was feeling petty this morning, “so I’ll talk to whoever the fuck I want. Unless you want me settling down for a nice old chinwag with the Fifth House, or maybe the Third?” Gideon knew that both Harrow and her parents lived in perpetual fear that their House would be unable to sustain itself, and end up as little more than an appendix to the Third or Fifth Houses, so Harrow looked predictably galled by the notion of Gideon cosying up to them. It certainly shut her up long enough to allow Gideon to finish her own soup, and start on Harrow’s.

When Gideon finally pushed the bowl away, enjoying the rare sensation of a completely full stomach, Harrow surprised her by sitting abruptly opposite her, and smacking her book down on the table.

“I trust now that you’ve gorged like an animal, you’ve regained what passes for higher brain function in that thick cranium of yours?” She spat, although quietly, and with one eye on the door behind Gideon, ensuring that they were alone. Harrow was so focused on the door they'd entered through that she jumped, startled, when another white-robed construct came up from behind her to deposit two steaming cups of the plant water from yesterday on their tables. Gideon picked hers up, and cupped it in her hands, enjoying the heat, though she learned her lesson from the day before and didn’t attempt to drink it.

“What, you want to start a book club?”

“Look,” Harrow demanded, opening the book and turning it to a page containing three sets of angular diagrams, covered in odd scrawls.

“You’ve developed a passion for abstract art?” 

“It’s a map. While you were _sleeping,_ I mapped all accessible doors in Canaan House. I’ve divided it into its three most significant levels, but that’s not quite accurate. The central floor is more of a mezzanine providing access to the top and bottom floors. The terraces are sections in and of themselves, but they aren’t important for our purposes.”

 _Our purposes?_ Gideon thought, but she didn’t interrupt. 

“Each _X_ denotes a door. Current count is seven hundred and seventy-five, and only six are locked. We should visit Teacher without delay and ask for permission to enter those rooms; the Sixth are already starting to sniff around, and the other Houses can’t be far behind.”

Gideon paused, savouring a moment of smug, anticipatory glee, before fishing the little key she got from Teacher out of the pocket of her robe, and waving it triumphantly in front of Harrow’s face.

“ _Way_ ahead of you, Nova. This is the only one Teacher can let us go in - it’s some sort of hatch, down in the basement.”

“But,” Harrow sputtered, “how… you didn’t… you haven’t…”

“I haven’t even been to the hatch? Yeah, I know. I also didn’t spend all night creeping around the corridors like a weirdo making a stupid map. It didn’t occur to you to, I dunno, just _ask_ Teacher?” Gideon neglected to mention that it had only occurred to her after some prompting - what Harrow didn’t know wouldn’t hurt Gideon, and Gideon was getting immense satisfaction from the shock on Harrow’s face.

“Then we should go to the hatch immediately,” Harrow said finally, when she’d recovered enough to speak.

“Or,” Gideon said, taking a truly malicious satisfaction in drawing this out, and knowing that she was probably completely ruining any chance she had of using their time on the First to get Harrow to loosen up, but also unable to resist tormenting her, “I could go have a shower. A nice _long_ shower. Then maybe a nap before lunch. Maybe we can pencil something in for this afternoon?”

“You are utterly _faithless._ If I must drag you kicking and screaming to your duty then rest assured, I will do just that. Shower, if you must. Paint your face _adequately_ . Talk to no one. I will investigate the hatch, and if you do not join me there inside the hour I will tie a noose in your intestines and _hang you_.”

“Hey, is that any way to talk to the Reverend Daughter?” Gideon said, oddly touched by the threat; it had been so long since Harrow had offered to feed Gideon her own spleen, or pull her spine out through her eye sockets. She had weirdly missed waking up most mornings with a coded death threat in Harrow’s curt handwriting waiting on her pillow, the way she had when they were kids. 

It was in this spirit of fond nostalgia that Gideon found herself saying, “... and you aren’t going in there on your own. Teacher said it was like, chocka with ghosts and I might die. If you insist on dragging us down there, we’re going together. Which means you can at least wait for me to shower.”

“You _will_ accompany me to the hatch, as soon as you’ve performed your ablutions?”

“Yes,” Gideon sighed, feeling her dreams of a relaxing break slipping through her fingers, but unable to resist the tantalising prospect of time with Harrow, working towards a common goal. Maybe bonding. Maybe Gideon could do some really flashy necromancy and Harrow would swoon…

Well, Harrow probably wasn’t actually capable of swooning, but Gideon had known for years that she’d have no choice but to marry Harrowhark Nova, eventually, and the very most she could hope for was a bride who wouldn’t strangle her on their wedding night. Anything she could do which might achieve a modicum of tolerability in Harrow’s eyes was worth the effort. 

The Reverend Father and Mother had no intentions of letting Gideon repeat their mistakes and leave it too late to produce an heir through natural means. If they’d had their way, there’d have been a mini-Gideon underfoot nine months after she hit the age of majority. 

It was only her assurance that she could succeed in courting Harrow which had prevented Priamhark from outright ordering his daughter to marry her, and if he’d done that, well, Gideon wasn’t sure what would have happened, but she was pretty certain that the Ninth would not have ended that day with both its Reverend Father and Reverend Daughter fully intact - the only real question would have been whether Gideon managed to murder Priamhark before Harrow murdered her.


	8. Chapter 8

The bathroom in their quarters was large, with a whole load of fittings Gideon couldn’t identify, but she regretfully decided that she’d have to leave a thorough investigation of the facilities for a later time, and took a quick sonic, then removed and reapplied her paint. She even tried to paint her face well, or, well by her standards anyway. She didn't attempt any of the fancier patterns, like _The Chain_ , or _The Drowned Priestess_ , but she made sure to do a decent job on the basic skull she favoured. She didn’t exactly _regret_ needling Harrow earlier over breakfast - she never regretted bugging Harrow - but she knew she needed to put in more of an effort if she wanted to use this time to try and get closer to her.

As she followed Harrow all the way to the hatch, up and down stairs, along precarious terraces, and through mouldering doors on rusted hinges, she had to grudgingly admit (though, not out loud, of course) that she was pretty impressed. To have covered this much ground overnight, Harrow clearly couldn’t have slept at all. Which begged the question…

“Harrow - you did eat, earlier, right? That’s why you didn’t have the soup the constructs brought you while I was eating?”

“Breakfast is unimportant.”

“Harrow!” Gideon exclaimed, mentally kicking herself for not having thought of this earlier. “I won’t have my cavalier collapsing out of dehydration and hunger! You’re so obsessed with maintaining our image; how will it look if you faint and I have to carry you out of the hatch? Hell, if I’d let you go down to the hatch alone and something had happened - we only have one key! I wouldn’t even have been able to get in to help you!”

“I will not faint. I will do my duty. Just because you cannot understand what it means to dedicate yourself to something does not mean that all of us are shirkers.”

“Harrow… you can’t _dedicate_ yourself out of basic shit like eating and sleeping! I don’t care how stubborn you are.”

“I will rest when you are a lyctor. If you truly do care about my wellbeing,” this was said in a tone of heavy skepticism, “then you will get to work.”

Gideon almost kept arguing, but they were at the hatch by that point, and Gideon knew that Harrow had been set to fasting as penance at least as many times as she had. Harrow was right that a couple of missed meals wouldn’t be anything she wasn’t very practiced in dealing with, but Gideon decided that she’d make sure that Harrow ate that night - one way or another.

Gideon fished the key out of her pocket and unlocked the hatch, realising that she should probably find a more secure place to keep it than just stuffed in her robes - and with that thought, she realised what the strange metal rings were that Teacher had given out the day before.

“Hey, Harrow, pass me the key ring?” 

If Gideon had hoped that Harrow would be thrown by the request, she was disappointed. Harrow had clearly already figured out that was what it was. Still, she’d outsmarted Harrow once today - if only inadvertently - and that still felt pretty good. Harrow handed the key ring over, and waited for Gideon to fiddle the hatch key onto it, before holding out her hand for Gideon to pass it back.

“Not a chance,” Gideon said, working the key ring so that it hung from the cord around her neck where she knew she wouldn’t lose it - she never took that necklace off. “I already said, I don’t want you coming down here on your own if it’s as dangerous as Teacher says. Besides, if I don’t keep the keys, how am I supposed to blackmail you into taking care of yourself?”

Harrow’s face took on the particular scowl Gideon recognised as meaning that Gideon had won the argument, but Harrow was determined to make her suffer for it. Surprisingly, Gideon was honestly looking forward to finding out what vengeance Harrow was plotting. At least it meant she was in Harrow’s thoughts. It was worth being hated, to have Harrow’s full attention.

Without another word, Harrow pulled open the Hatch, revealing a ladder which she instantly started climbing down. The pit it led down into was just as deep and foreboding as anything in Drearburh… until Harrow was around ten metres down, at which point old-fashioned electric lighting started flickering into life - they must have been on some sort of a motion sensor. Gideon took a moment to hike up her robes, tucking them into her belt where they wouldn’t trip her as she climbed, before following.

When they reached the bottom, they were in some sort of retro installation, reminiscent of the very oldest sections of Drearburh, all bare metal grilles and white plastic. 

“Good,” Harrow commented - the cheeriest she’d sounded since… well… ever. “Look at the dust - we’re the first ones down here.”

“I wasn’t aware it was a race?” Gideon said, unhitching her robes so they fell to the ground again, unfettered. She winced, seeing that they dragged in the thick layer of dust and feeling grubby already.

“Of course it is, you dunce. You really want to become a lyctor hanging on the Sixth’s coattails, or the Fifth’s?”

“I really don’t want to become a lyctor at all, but even if I did, what difference does it make if someone else gets there first? Lyctors live basically forever. Why would anyone care in a myriad’s time if one of them got there a few days ahead of the rest?”

“Position! Status! You are here to prove your worth, and thus the worth of your entire House, to the Necrolord Prime. The Ninth has always been last - but now we can change all that! We can be first among all the Houses!”

Gideon thought, privately, that it would take a great deal more than winning the non-existent lyctor race to make anyone give a shit about the Ninth, beyond those who had to live there, but she kept those thoughts to herself.

“If we’re the only ones that have found this place…” Gideon mused.

“Yes,” Harrow interjected, “you should absolutely ward the entrance in case any of others find it. The more delays we can put in their path, the better.”

“What?” Gideon said, mystified, “they have as much right as we do to come down here. I was going to say that maybe we should tell the other Houses. I mean, if this is all one big puzzle, then surely we’ll solve it faster all together? It’s not like there isn’t scope for all of us to ascend together,” _except me,_ thought Gideon, silently, “so why keep it a secret?”

Harrow didn’t even dignify that suggestion with an answer, but swept down the corridor, kicking up little puffs of dust with each aggravated stomp, and Gideon had to hurry to catch her, even with her much longer legs. 

The tunnel opened into a big room, with - Gideon counted quickly - eight exits, in addition to the one they’d entered through. Each passage was labelled:

**LABORATORY ONE - THREE**

**LABORATORY FOUR - SIX**

**LABORATORY SEVEN - TEN**

**PRESSURE ROOM**

**PRESERVATION**

**MORTUARY**

**WORK ROOMS**

**SANITISER**

The walls were plain, aside from the plaque next to each doorway, and an enormous old whiteboard rimmed in metal, printed with lines for a timetable that had not been used in a very, very, _very_ long time. The lines had blurred; the board was stained; here and there meaningless bits of letters survived: the loop of what might be _O_ or _C_ ; the arch of an _M_ ; a line-suffixed curve that could be _G_ or _Q_. But in one bottom corner lingered the ghost of a message, drawn thickly in black ink once, now faded but still quite clear:

_It is finished!_

“Might as well start with number one, I guess?” Gideon suggested, only to be met with Harrow’s withering glare.

“First we map it. Only then can we correctly assess the optimal steps to take. And you _must_ ward the entrance.”

“Nope. Getting here first doesn’t mean we own the place. Did you ever stop to think that the Ninth might not be in such dire straits if they didn’t insist on doing everything alone?” 

Harrow said nothing, but she looked like Gideon had physically hit her. More than that - Gideon had punched Harrow plenty of times; Harrow didn’t get hurt, she just hit back. This looked like Gideon had gutted her, eviscerated her, just yanked all her wet quivering inside parts right out from her torso and left her hollow. 

Gideon hadn’t been referring to… she hadn’t intended to imply… shit. She didn’t even know if Harrow knew that her parents had told Gideon the whole story of her conception, but Gideon's admonition against the Ninth's bull-headed independence had clearly struck a nerve, and it didn't take a genius to figure out _which_ nerve. 

As quickly as Harrow’s haunted look had appeared, it was gone again. Harrow froze over, became chill and impenetrable and blank - the _dutiful servant_ facade that Gideon hated so much. Harrow pulled out her book and started to pace out the dimensions of the facility, moving from room to room, corridor to corridor, sketching the floorplan out in her book as she went. Gideon trailed behind her, vainly trying to get the taste of foot out of her mouth. 

Eventually, the whole facility was mapped, which Gideon only noticed because Harrow closed her book and tucked it away; she’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts she hadn’t taken in anything she’d seen, which she’d have been chagrined about, if she actually had any intention of succeeding. Since she didn’t, she just felt a bit dazed. Without breaking into the thorny silence wrapped chokingly tight around them, Gideon followed Harrow back to Laboratory One. The door had a little sign next to it, saying: _Perpetuation_

Gideon pushed open the door, to reveal a small foyer. On one side, there was a small metal shelving unit, bare except for a dry, crumbled mass that brief inspection revealed to be some sort of fabric, aged and dried out to the point where Gideon suspected that it would crumble away to nothing if touched. The only other features in the room were a few hooks in the wall, and a door opposite. In front of the door was a large, squared off metal archway. Gideon held out an arm to her side without even thinking, stopping Harrow before she could go ahead.

“I didn’t go to all the trouble of getting you here,” Gideon said, “just to get you killed on the first day. Prudence - that’s a virtue, right? Why don’t you just stand back and work on being virtuous while I make sure that arch thing isn’t going to try to murder us when we try to walk through.” 

The words fell flat into the silence, and Gideon’s voice sounded awkward and bumbling to her ears. She pulled a chip of bone from one of her pockets, tossing it down to the floor, and it bloomed into a full skeleton before it even had time to touch the ground. Gideon resisted the urge to turn and see whether Harrow had been impressed by that little bit of necromantic preening, and instead she gestured to the construct, and it walked forwards, through the archway. A little bulb she hadn’t previously noticed lit up green, and the door slid open. 

With Teacher’s warning still in her mind, Gideon dismissed the construct, but still didn’t step beneath the archway herself. As soon as the construct disappeared, the green light went out, and the door slid closed again. 

Next, she pulled a small knife from her belt - the blade barely longer or broader than her smallest finger, but sharp enough to draw blood easily. She cut a shallow slice down the inside of her forearm, wincing at the sensation of her skin parting around the metal. There wasn’t much blood - she hadn’t cut deeply - but there was enough to draw a very basic, and very weak, ward on the ground just ahead of the arch. She watched as the blood bubbled and singed away to an inert skeletonised powder, but the ward didn’t degrade any faster than it should have given the general ambient thanergy.

Finally, she touched the metal of the arch with an outstretched finger. It was warm, and vibrated ever-so-slightly, but nothing bad happened. She extended her arm, holding it under the arch, and still nothing. Finally, she heaved a sigh, and stepped forward. The bulb blinked green, the door opened, and lights flicked on in the room beyond. Gideon walked in, Harrow following close behind. 

The room wasn’t large - barely larger than the foyer had been, and it was almost entirely empty. The walls were white, starkly reflecting the fluorescent light pouring out of a tube in the ceiling, and Gideon was grateful for her sunglasses. In the centre of the room were two plinths, each about hip-height; one clear plex, with an iridescent white box suspended inside it, on a platform near the top; the other plain white and featureless, with an apple sat on top of it.

Gideon barely recognised the fruit as an apple. She hadn’t had one in years. This one looked fresh, and plump, and crisp - far more appealing than the withered, dried out things she remembered from early childhood. The whole room even smelled of apples, until Gideon felt her mouth water, in spite of her recent and hearty meal. 

She almost raised a hand to pick the apple up, but a vague unease stopped her. After a moment, she realised why she felt uneasy; the undisturbed accumulation of dust in the hallways indicated that they were the first people here in years, maybe decades, maybe even longer. What was a perfect, fresh piece of fruit doing in a room that, by all accounts, no one had entered in ages? There were no other entrances to this room, and the foyer with the arch had been just as grubby with age as everywhere else. This whole room was dusty too, and under the scent of apple was the undefinable mustiness of age. Only the apple was pristine, and untouched by time. 

Gideon took a moment to cautiously study both plinths, and then run her hands over them - careful to avoid touching the apple at all. Other than some sort of internal hinge where the top of the clear plinth met the sides, wired up to some sort of round plate - which strongly implied that the top could lift up to allow access to the box inside, if she could work out how to trigger it - she found nothing of note. 

Gideon was aware that she was being uncharacteristically circumspect, but she was on edge and her nerves were jangling. There were just so many different things unsettling her; the thanergy, which was even more striking down in this creepy abandoned facility than it had been above; the even-worse-than-usual tension between her and Harrow since she’d made that stupid comment; honestly, even the thought that Harrow could be in danger down here, in a situation where Gideon had to assume that any threat would be necromantic in origin, and therefore utterly beyond Harrow’s ability to counter or protect herself from…

Gideon really wished she’d just stayed in bed.

Well, she was here now, and out of ideas to stall. She couldn’t chicken out, not with Harrow watching, so there was nothing else for it. Gideon was going to have to take the forbidden fruit, and see what knowledge it gave her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try and come up with something for all of the labs, but I thought it might be fun to imagine what some of the other challenges might be. Hope it's interesting!


	9. Chapter 9

When she reached out to grab the apple, she noticed a ring on the plinth it sat on, which looked very familiar to the plate on the other plinth, and she filed that away, feeling that it would be significant. She didn’t pick up the apple at first, but merely touched it. It felt… normal. Cool skin, smooth and firm, nothing out of the ordinary, except…

“It’s _full_ of thalergy,” she said, surprised.

“It’s organic,” Harrow responded. “Organic living matter produces thalergy.”

“I know that. I’m not a total moron. This isn’t alive; I don’t see an apple tree anywhere, do you? There’s _too much_ thalergy, and no thanergy at all. You don’t get pure thalergy, not ever. Anything alive is also dying; that’s just how it works.”

“I don’t understand,” Harrow said, sounding peeved. “Necromancy is the use of _thanergy_. Thalergy only becomes significant because it can be converted into thanergy, so why would the First House have a laboratory with some sort of thalergetic experiment? Thalergy of itself is not necromantically useful, and cannot be manipulated by an adept.”

Gideon was surprised Harrow was so knowledgeable about necromancy. For some reason, she’d assumed that Harrow had avoided it as much as possible, when it had been such a catastrophic disappointment that she hadn’t been born with the aptitude. Just like Harrow to fucking torture herself learning necromantic theory she’d never have the chance to use. Even more like her to only learn the bone stuff.

“Not a bone adept, maybe. I know this might shock your close minded bone-brain, but the lines aren’t anywhere near as cleanly drawn with flesh magic. And spirit magic… well, blood wards work the way they do specifically _because_ of the blending of thanergy and thalergy. I wouldn’t be surprised if lyctors were able to work thalergy directly - how else are they going to live so long? Maybe that’s what the experiment is about - learning to use thalergy in its pure form.”

Gideon could tell that Harrow wanted to snap back at her, about the necromantic superiority of the Ninth’s precious bone magic, and how flesh and spirit magic were lesser and irrelevant, but with clear evidence to the contrary sat before them on a pedestal, Harrow merely harrumphed in resentful silence as Gideon turned her attention back to the apple. Perhaps it was just the thalergy - just the novel departure from everything osseous - but she found herself fascinated in spite of herself.

Well, nothing said that she’d have to actually become a lyctor, just because she took the bait and followed some of their little puzzles.

Having exhausted all the possibilities she could think of without actually taking the fruit in hand, Gideon took a deep breath, and picked the apple up. No sooner had she lifted it from the plinth, than the apple had decayed away entirely, leaving nothing but a sticky, greasy smudge on Gideon’s fingers.

“Fucking yuck!” she exclaimed, wiping her hand clean on her robes. Harrow sneered in distaste at the mess, and Gideon had to admit that myriad-old apple goo was not a good look on her. She scrubbed at the gunk, managing only to work it further into the fabric, and spread the stain, before giving up. She took off her robes, piling them in a heap in the corner, where she could get a little distance from the cloying smell of rot. 

“You can’t _disrobe_ in public!” Harrow said, appalled.

“Uh, I’m wearing clothes.”

“That isn’t the point!”

“If you’re so worried, go guard the door. That way we won’t risk anyone seeing my calves and instantly losing all respect for the Ninth.” 

Harrow went to the door, and deliberately turned her back on Gideon. _Oh well_ , it would probably be easier to concentrate without Harrow’s critical eyes upon her.

In the time it had taken her to strip off her outer robe and turn back to the plinth, there was a new apple in place.

Okay. The challenge was clearly to do with the apple. The apple on the plinth had been preserved somehow. The other plinth had some sort of device, probably a sensor, which looked like it would cause the plinth to open up, giving her access to whatever was inside the box. 

It seemed logical, then, that Gideon’s task was to transfer the apple from one plinth to the other - easy enough - but it would degrade and decay almost instantaneously when moved. That was the catch. It seemed obvious, but Gideon knew she’d kick herself later if she didn’t try the easy stuff first. 

She pressed her hand down on the other pedestal, to see if it was a simple pressure sensor, with no result. She tried working her fingernails into the seam where the top looked as though it would lift up like a lid. Also nothing. Well, that wasn’t surprising.

“Hey, Harrow?” Harrow didn’t answer, but Gideon had to assume that was contrariness - there was no way Harrow hadn’t heard her.

“Can you go up to the kitchens for me?”

“I’m _sorry_ ; need I remind you that I am your cavalier, not your handmaiden? If you are somehow hungry again already,” Harrow broke off, and muttered something under her breath which Gideon only caught fragments of: _… flesh magic… like an animal… bottomless… overmuscled…_ \- well, at least Harrow had _noticed_ the muscles. Gideon was accustomed to having to take whatever little wins she could. Once Harrow had gotten that little diatribe off her chest, she continued as if her _sotto voce_ interjection had never happened: “then you can go yourself.”

“Harrow.” Gideon said, “I’m not sending you for a snack - though, you should absolutely grab _yourself_ one while you’re there. I need another apple, to try and make this device work. I’m not leaving you down here alone, and if we both leave, someone else might take the room while we’re gone - unless you’ve changed your mind about collaborating with the other houses?”

Harrow scoffed.

“So will you just go to the damn kitchen?”

“It is to assist you in your lyctoral studies?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what I just said. Yes.”

“Then I shall do as you command, _Reverend Daughter.”_ Harrow turned and left without another word. 

The room seemed larger with Harrow gone, and the bright lights less harsh. Even the sickly scent of decay was less cloying, as if Harrow’s absence was a literal breath of fresh air. 

Gideon missed the days when she could just hate Harrow, when they could just fight, and it was enough to see each other bleed. Now Gideon was heir to the House Harrow loved more than anyone should be able to love such a hateful, mouldering old lump of rock and bones. Gideon was always hyper-aware that Harrow was _hers_ now; Harrow was a part of her congregation, and it was Gideon’s responsibility to keep her safe and well cared for - however much she continually failed at this, and however much they might both wish the situation were otherwise. 

When she spoke to Harrow now, it was with the weight of her position hanging over her words, and Harrow had not once attempted any actual violence against her since Gideon had been confirmed as Reverend Daughter. Instead she had found a way to make her rare words cut like blades, and her looks burn like acid. Gideon could handle a punch to the face from a childhood rival. She didn’t know how to deal with carefully obsequious contempt from a vassal.


	10. Chapter 10

While she was waiting for Harrow to return, Gideon wasted three more apples, each time wiping the resultant mess off her hands and onto the robes piled at the side of the room; she reckoned she’d probably need to burn them when she was done.

Now she knew what to expect, Gideon could pay more attention to what was happening necromantically, rather than being distracted by the unpleasant sensation of fruit deliquescing in her hands. At first she thought that the thalergy in the fruit was converting to thanergy, as she’d expect from something organic undergoing sudden and catastrophic decay, but when she was cleaning her hands of the third apple mush, she noticed that it still contained thalergy - not as much as before, but enough that the energy levels did not make sense. The amount of thanergy present was greater than the reduction in thalergy, so the thanergy hadn’t all come from within the apple itself, some of it had leeched in from outside when the apple was moved.

The implication was that there was some sort of banishment ward around the pedestal. Very limited in size - literally only large enough to hold a single apple - but also very powerful. Gideon knew how to construct banishment wards against ghosts (not that they were needed much on the Ninth. The poor souls of Gideon’s congregation did not make a habit of returning as revenants, either benign or otherwise. She couldn’t blame them - she wouldn’t want to go back either!), but to literally ward all thanergy from an area was… well, it was mind boggling. 

She was pretty sure she was on the right track, at least. Extraordinary as the concept was, theoretically it would produce exactly the phenomena she was seeing. All living matter was made up of an interwoven lattice of thanergy and thalergy. Without thalergy, well, something without thalergy was dead. Without thanergy… it was purely theoretical (or had been, until Gideon had walked into the room), but an organism stripped of its thanergy would stay in stasis, never dying, never rotting, but also never changing or growing. A seed stored this way would never sprout. Arguably, it was as much a death as the death of thanergy, but far more useful for storing food - if one had the sheer spare power to waste.

Before she could think much more, there was a banging on the door. 

“Harrow?” Gideon called out, fervently hoping that it _was_ Harrow on the other side of the door, and wondering whether it had been foolish to trust that Harrow could get out, and come back, without falling foul of any of the dangers Teacher had warned her of - but which, thus far, had failed to materialise. Suddenly, she realised that she still had the hatch key hung around her neck. Had Harrow thought to leave the hatch wedged open on her way out, or was Harrow locked out, and it was some vengeful ghost or other spectre on the other side of the door?

“Let me in, Griddle,” the name, unheard since they’d been children, brought an unexpected lump to Gideon’s throat. Harrow sounded distracted, annoyed, maybe even slightly alarmed; whatever it was that had perturbed Harrow had shaken her enough to knock loose some of her icy facade, revealing their old familiarity. 

Gideon took a moment to compose herself, not wanting Harrow to see how much that little slip had meant to her. Then she went to the door, to open it, but found that it did not respond when she laid her hand on the panel she’d assumed was a door command. Well, Harrow had gotten out just fine earlier. It would mean taking a hit to her pride, but as Gideon couldn’t see any other mechanism in the featureless room, she’d just have to ask.

“It isn’t opening. How did you get out before?” 

“The panel by the door, idiot,” 

_Oh shit._

“I just tried that. Can you open it from your side?”

“No.” a pause, “the light by the door is red.”

“It was green when we came through earlier.”

“I know.”

“Well, what colour was it when you left?”

“I don’t recall.”

“You don’t…” Gideon paused to rein in her temper. There would have been no reason for Harrow to check it. 

Harrow apparently didn’t use that pause to rein in _her_ temper…

“I didn’t expect my adept to get herself locked in a room! I know the Ninth was scraping the bottom of the barrel when they chose you, but foolishly I thought I could leave you alone long enough to get to the kitchen and back without you doing anything stupid!”

“I didn’t _do_ anything…” Gideon tailed off. A thought occurred to her.

“The light is red?”

“I said that.”

“And did you find an apple in the kitchen?”

“Yes, _Reverend Daughter,_ I managed to succeed in this most arduous of tasks,” the sarcasm was practically dripping from Harrow’s words. “I also fetched you a change of robes, so that you can be decently clothed when we leave.”

“I _am_ decent, but look - “ Gideon ploughed right on when she heard Harrow starting to protest, not wanting to be derailed. “Take the apple and throw it out in the corridor. I think it’s a failsafe, to stop anyone cheating.”

“Cheating? You were intending to _cheat_?” Harrow’s voice gained about an octave with offended incredulity.

“I was just exploring all the options. Have you gotten rid of it?”

The door slid open, answering Gideon’s question. Before she could get out - feeling the claustrophobic need to be somewhere else for a minute, even though she’d only been momentarily confined - it slid shut again. She put her hand to the panel - nothing.

“Uh, Harrow? What’s going on?”

“I brought the apple back into the room.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?” 

“Confirmation,” Harrow said with calculated nonchalance that made Gideon instantly suspicious. “It would be reckless to base a conclusion on a single occurrence. Data is meaningless if it’s not replicable.”

“Fine, great. Now you’re done ‘replicating’, can you let me out?”

“I could do that…”

Gideon heard the ‘but’ coming a mile off.

“Or maybe we could take this opportunity to have a more in-depth discussion of our strategy, regarding your ascension to lyctorhood.”

“Strategy? What strategy? My only strategy is _not to do it.”_

“And that is precisely what we need to discuss. Your lack of ambition reflects poorly on your House, and is therefore unacceptable.”

“Harrow, you’re not going to change my mind about this. I don’t want to be a lyctor.”

“What you want does not matter. It has never mattered, anymore than what I want matters. You _will_ become a lyctor.”

“I absolutely won’t though. And what you want does matter. That’s the only reason I got you to come with me - because you wanted to.”

“Don’t be mawkish, Griddle. I only came here with you because I knew that Ortus’ presence would not be sufficient to keep you from disgracing us all. What I want has never mattered.”

“It matters to me.” Gideon said, sinking to her knees beside the closed door, voice small, almost hoping that Harrow wouldn’t hear her through the door that separated them. If Harrow did hear, she didn’t respond. 


	11. Chapter 11

“Harrow…?” Gideon ventured, after long minutes of silence stretched out, with no sign that Harrow intended to reply. Still her cavalier said nothing.

“This is juvenile. If you want to talk, let’s just talk!”

Silence.

“Of course I care about what you want. I always have! Forget all the bullshit - you don’t have to be my cavalier. You don’t even have to be my wife. I know it’s what your mother and father expect… but I’d never force anything on you, you must know that. I don’t even… I know you won’t love me. I know you can’t love me. I just thought…”

Gideon was babbling. Something about the closed door barring the way between them gave the conversation an air of the confessional. And Harrow wasn’t interrupting her. Did Gideon dare to hope that she might actually be listening, and not just taking her time selecting the perfect words to cut Gideon down?

“I just want you to be happy, Harrow. If you can’t be happy with me, then that’s fine. I’ll buy you a commission in the Cohort. You fight like a demon, I know you’d be amazing there. Or passage to one of the other houses. The Sixth love new people, and I bet those stuffy old librarians are in dire need of a decent cavalier. Just tell me what you want!”

If Gideon thought that the idea of Harrow being something other than Ninth would goad her into responding, it didn’t.

“It isn’t your fault,” Gideon said, after another uncomfortable silence. She knew she should stop talking, but she couldn’t bear sitting there with nothing to listen to but her own thoughts. “None of it was ever your fault. I _know,_ okay? I can't say it, they made me swear, but I know.”

Even saying that much, even just hinting, the power of the vow engulfed her. She felt points of sun-bright pain prickling at her lips and knew that she was on shaky ground. If she pushed too far, revealed too much, then the old wounds would rip themselves asunder and pour; she would bleed to death through those holes Pelleamena had opened in her, which might have closed over but would never heal. The Reverend Mother had pierced her with a needle made from Gideon's own bone and sewn her mouth closed with sacramental cord, and though both needle and cord were far from here, their power still held sway over her. A Sewn Tongue could not let slip its secrets without dire consequence.

“I can't say, but I know you hear me, and I have to trust that you understand. I know how your mind works, and I know you blame yourself, but you can’t. That was never your responsibility! You shouldn’t have to carry that weight at all, and I’m sorry you’ve carried it alone for so long, but you don’t need to!”

So here she was, laying her cards on the table at last. Everything she’d wanted to say to Harrow for years, and now she had the chance, Harrow didn’t even have a single word to say back, because the only thing Harrow cared about was Gideon becoming a lyctor. 

Whatever she’d thought would happen, when she finally got some time alone with Harrow, she’d been wrong. In some ways, it was everything she’d hoped for; Harrow had talked to her more in the last day than she had in years. Harrow was threatening violence upon her person again. She’d even called Gideon ‘Griddle’, twice now. But for all of that, she was more remote than ever. 

Their differences were now, demonstrably, more than just a lifelong rivalry. They were ideological. Harrow wanted Gideon to become a lyctor, for the glory of the Ninth. Gideon did not want to become a lyctor, and not just for her own selfish reasons. Gideon saw no glory in prolonging the Ninth’s protracted death rattle. She was a realist - it would take more favour than any House had ever been shown to make the Ninth viable again, and why would the King Undying consider renewing a House he’d never wanted in the first place? What God would trust a new crop of children to a House which ate its own young?

It would shock Harrow to hear that Gideon did take being the Reverend Daughter seriously, in her own way. She might give exactly zero shits about the Locked Tomb, and be terrible at services, might even dabble in forbidden flesh magics, and wield a blade, but it was Gideon, more often than not, who was called to perform last rites when one of her penitents died. The dying wanted compassion, they wanted kindness. They wanted someone who would cry, softly, and kiss their brows in a way that told them they would be missed, and not just because of dwindling census numbers. Kindness wasn’t a defining trait of the Ninth, but it was a defining trait of its Reverend Daughter.

Gideon was as dutiful as the Reverend Mother and Father could ever have hoped - she just understood her duties differently. The way Gideon saw it, her job as Reverend Daughter was to sit by deathbed after deathbed, year after year, until only she, Harrow, and Ortus were left, and then she had to get them out, make sure they could live out their lives with the living, and leave the dead to guard the dead. The Ninth was only ever supposed to be a tomb.

“Harrow,” Gideon said, finally, seeing that Harrow’s mind was made up, and there would be no reconciliation for them, and unwilling to keep putting herself out there, only to be hurt, over and over. “There are two ways this can go. You can let me out, and we can have a rational conversation about this, or I will break myself out, throw our hatch key out a window and spend the whole rest of our time here reading magazines in bed - your choice.”

Gideon gave Harrow a minute more to respond, and then she got to her feet, assessing the best way to get through the locked door. 

She reached out to the door panel, intending to see if she could pull off its cover and expose any wiring, but the moment her hand touched it, the door swung open, to reveal an empty foyer. Harrow was gone.

Gideon realised that she’d been talking to an empty room, through an unlocked door, for who knew how long. _When had Harrow left? How much had she heard?_

Gideon felt numb, and ashamed, and her chest hurt like she’d just taken a body-blow.

She didn’t know what to do, but she had certainly had her fill of this facility for now. She bundled her soiled robes up in one arm, then noticed that Harrow had left behind the fresh robes she’d fetched. For all that she’d told Harrow that she was perfectly decent without them, she was happy to throw on the new robes and pull the hood down over her head - she knew she wasn’t doing a good job of schooling her expression into safe neutrality.

After a moment’s deliberation, she left the apple-stained robes on the shelf, with the other ancient and abandoned fabric. She didn’t care if the other Houses realised she’d been in there; secrecy was stupid and pointless and half of what drove her so nuts about the Ninth. And she didn’t feel like going back to their rooms just yet, even to drop off the laundry. She wasn’t sure what she dreaded more - Harrow being there, or not? Harrow having heard everything she’d just blabbed, or none of it? All her options sucked, so she decided she had to get away for a while.


	12. Chapter 12

She left the hatch, and for want of a better destination than ‘away’, she wandered the halls, more or less at random, but always taking the path which looked like it would put distance between her and the other occupants of Canaan House. Gideon was not in the mood to make polite conversation. She kept replaying all the stupid things she’d said, over and over in her head, trying to work out when Harrow had left, and what she’d heard.

After a while, she found herself walking down a short flight of cramped metal stairs, leading to a tiled vestibule where the lights fizzed disconsolately and refused to come on all the way. In the comfortable gloom, Gideon pushed her way through two huge doors which groaned on rusted hinges. In the centre of the room was a large, rectangular pit which absolutely reeked of chemicals. 

Breathing as shallowly as she could manage, she skirted the pit and continued on through a set of glass doors, smeared with unidentifiable muck. The room beyond the glass doors was large and open, with an enormous mirror covering the whole of the far wall. Rusted old swords were racked up around the room, and even without that clue, Gideon had spent enough time with Aiglamene with what passed for a training room in the Ninth to instantly recognise the purpose of this room. 

She wished that she could bring her sword down here to practice - the problem with sharing a suite with Harrow (assuming Harrow hadn’t already moved her things and gone off to hide somewhere, which wasn’t out of the question) was that most of what Gideon had looked forward to in the boundless free time stretching out ahead of her, was stuff that she most certainly couldn’t do in a room she shared with Harrow. 

Harrow would be disgusted by her workouts, offended by her practicing with her two-hander, and as for the _other_ things Gideon liked to get up to when she had time alone with her magazines… Harrow’s disapproving little ferret face glaring at her wouldn’t exactly create the requisite ambience, no matter the quality of Gideon’s reading materials.

But training here wasn’t on the cards for Gideon either, as the cavaliers of the other houses would no doubt find it soon and start using it for their own practice. Even if she’d been ready to deal with the hell Harrow would give her for joining them, there wouldn’t be any satisfaction in sparring with the cavaliers - rapiers bored Gideon to tears, and she couldn’t see any of the overbred cavaliers primary knowing how to fight with a proper sword, unless the Second cavalier had originally trained for infantry. 

Regretfully, she abandoned the training room, and not seeing any further doors - aside from one into a small nook with a sink and some long-abandoned towels - she went back into the dimly lit vestibule.

This time, she saw another door which she hadn’t noticed before. It was set close to the staircase, and almost entirely hidden behind a tapestry, aside from one corner which had slipped to reveal a section of door frame. 

Cautiously, Gideon pushed the tapestry aside, relieved to find that, while it was definitely old, it didn’t disintegrate into her hands. Uncovered, the door was made of a dark wood. Gideon tried the handle, and found that it was unlocked.

Through the door was a long corridor, windowless, but with lights set periodically along the ceiling which were now flickering to life with a pained _clunk_ … _clunk_ … _clunk_ …

At the far end of the corridor was a huge baroque monstrosity of a door, completely out of place in this unassuming hallway. It was bracketed by heavy pillars, and the door was made of a black stone which gave it a very forbidding air. Gideon got a little closer, and she could see an odd relief carved above the lintel, set within a moulded panel - five little circles joined with lines, in no pattern that Gideon recognised. Below this sat a solid stone beam with carved leaves swagged horizontally from one end to the other. At the apex of each swag was carved an animal’s skull with long horns, which curved inward into wicked points that almost met. 

Now she was closer, she could also see that the columns on either side of the door were carved in a way which made them seem writhing, slithering, and alive. With a vague shudder, Gideon backed off and turned back the way she’d come. Some instinct - whether it was a lingering habit of stupid Ninth secrecy, or just aversion to the black door with its creepy carvings - prompted her to tack the tapestry back into place, hiding the door completely. 

Voices were fading into the edge of her hearing from the top of the landing that led to the stairs. From what she’d seen, the stairs were her only way out, so much as she’d prefer to avoid people, her only choice was to reveal herself now, or get caught skulking around in the dark, and perhaps be mistaken for trying to spy. 

“- mystical, oblique clap-trap” someone was saying - Gideon thought it might have been the greasy Third House cavalier. “And I have half a mind to write to your father and complain -”

“- what,” drawled another voice, “that the _First House_ isn’t treating us fairly -”

Oh yeah, if this was the Third House, or some of them anyway, then Gideon did not want to get off on the wrong foot by being caught eavesdropping. She had high hopes for maybe spending some quality time getting to know the statuesque Third twin. Gideon started up the stairs, letting her feet fall a little more heavily than usual so there was no way she wouldn’t be heard. The voices fell silent. When Gideon reached the top of the stairs, she saw that she had been correct - the Third House twins stood there, followed by their pompous cavalier. Bracing herself for the very unfamiliar experience of talking to someone not of the Ninth (and also not in their dotage), Gideon stepped forward, holding out a hand in greeting.

Rather than shaking her hand, as Gideon had expected, the gorgeous twin took Gideon’s fingers in hers, and raised them to her lips, so that she could press a lingering kiss to Gideon’s knuckles. Grateful for the paint and heavy hood which hid her flushed cheeks, Gideon cleared her throat and introduced herself.

“Gideon Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth.”

“Oh,” said the blonde with an understated, breathy excitement, without releasing her grip on Gideon’s hand, “I know who _you_ are.”

Gideon supposed she was pretty recognisable, being the only necromancer sloping around the place in melodramatic swathes of black.

“Then you have me at a disadvantage, Lady,” Gideon replied, trying to infuse her response with a similar warmth, even if the other twin’s narrow-eyed glare dissuaded her from trying anything obviously flirtatious.

“Coronabeth Tridentarius, Crown Princess of Ida.” Coronabeth let go of Gideon’s hand to gesture to her companions. “This is my sister, Ianthe Tridentarius, and our cavalier primary, Naberius Tern.”

“Prince of Ida,” Naberius interjected, because of course he did.

“' _Our_ cavalier primary _’_?” Gideon queried. 

The withered twin responded with bored diffidence, “We’re joint heirs. Corona and I share everything, don’t we, dearest sister?” Iante turned her cool violet eyes on Coronabeth, who nodded in vague affirmation. “Only makes sense for us to share Naberius, too.”

Gideon couldn’t help but catch Coronabeth’s eye, and raise a suggestive eyebrow at _share Naberius,_ and was gratified when Coronabeth smiled back, wrinkling her nose at the implication. Then she felt Ianthe’s sour gaze on her, and wondered, when the Third House had been named ‘ _Mouth of the Emperor’_ whether Ianthe’s pinched, downturned lips had been quite what the Emperor had pictured. 

Knowing now that Coronabeth was, in fact, a necromancer, and taking in her general vitality - especially when compared to her twin - Gideon hazarded a guess. “Animaphiliac?”

Coronabeth laughed a little at that, and there was an odd note to the laugh that Gideon didn’t quite know how to interpret. She would have thought that on the Third at least, the ‘vanity necromancy’ wouldn’t be a shameful thing to study, but perhaps even there animaphiliacs were looked down on. 

“You too, I assume?” Corona said after a moment. Gideon nodded, resisting the urge to flex. “You aren’t quite what I expected from the Ninth.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Gideon replied, ruefully.

“I thought the Ninth specialised in _bones_ ,” said Ianthe, in a forbidding tone which would have made her fit right in with Harrow’s awful great aunts. Ianthe said the word ‘bones’ the way Harrow said ‘animaphiliac’, which almost made Gideon chuckle, until she remembered that she wasn’t thinking about Harrow right now, and why. 

“Oh, we do,” Gideon said. At some inner prompting made up of the mingled urge to impress Coronabeth, and show Ianthe that she wasn’t someone to mess with, Gideon idly flicked a chip of bone from her pocket. Almost before it had hit the floor, the bone was blossoming out, forming a full skeletal construct. With a moment’s concentration, Gideon formed a delicate bone flower (or, what she assumed a basic flower looked like, never actually having seen a living one), and her construct bowed and presented the bloom to Coronabeth with a flourish. 

Corona’s eyes sparkled as she took the flower, and the flush which touched her cheeks was very gratifying. Before she could say anything, Ianthe took her arm and said:

“We were just leaving.”

Coronabeth looked a little disappointed, which Gideon definitely made a mental note of, but she didn’t protest.

“Oh well,” Gideon said, lightly - she hadn’t actually been wanting company right now, after all - “Teacher knows where our suite is, if you want to, um, discuss theorems, or anything.”

The Third left without another word, although Coronabeth gave Gideon a little wave as they went. 

Perhaps Gideon’s day was looking up.


	13. Chapter 13

Gideon decided it was time for lunch. If she was being honest, it felt more like time for bed - this day already felt a million years long, despite the late start. She made her way back to the room where she’d eaten breakfast, and found that the constructs had been busy in the intervening hours; the scrubbed, clean-smelling area of the room had expanded, and Gideon wondered whether they’d be here long enough to see the whole place cleaned. She took a moment to wonder how the three priests spent their time, if most of Canaan House had been allowed to fall into such an unusable state. Perhaps they had their own kitchen and eating area in a separate wing?

Then all such thoughts were pushed aside with the arrival of food. This time the constructs brought her a bowl of strange, white meat on top of a handful of leaves. She had no clue what to do with it. She ate the meat, first, with a fork - you didn’t need a knife; it was so tender that it flaked away if you touched it. She almost picked the leaves up with her fingers, but remembered that she hadn’t washed her hands since getting them covered in gross apple gunk. It took her a few tries, but eventually she figured out the knack of skewering the soggy plant matter on her fork.

She still didn’t have anywhere she wanted to be, and was already accumulating a plethora of places she _didn't_ want to be, so she stayed where she was for the time being, sipping at a glass of sweet pink water one of the skeletons had brought her, watching the constructs with interest as they continued cleaning the huge room. 

There were no cheap tricks with these constructs - no pins in the joints, or gobs of tendon holding them together. Not that pins or tendons were permitted on the Ninth either; once a budding necromancer had passed the tender age of three they were held to a higher standard, but from the amount of scorn she’d heard heaped on the bonework of the other houses, she hadn’t expected to be impressed by any construct outside the Ninth. As it was, these put hers to shame, and again, curiosity nagged at her.

Perhaps if she learned a few tricks while she was here - nothing too fancy, nothing that would make people mistake her for someone with ambition, or any intention of becoming a lyctor - but a few tricks to improve things around the Ninth, then she might be welcomed home with, well, not open arms, but less disappointment. Maybe only a cursory whipping, and a couple of weeks’ fasting at most. 

So she watched the constructs with all the scrutiny with which she had once watched skeletons plough the snow leek fields back home, looking for the slightest, most subtle signal that one of them might be her mother, only this time Gideon was looking for answers. The priests here must have been bored to absolute tears for decades to put this level of work into programming their constructs. 

Gideon did a literal spit-take at one point, spraying some of the sticky pink beverage all over the table in front of her, when one of the constructs tripped over a bucket of water another one was using to clean the floor, and it turned around, shrugged apologetically, and helped to mop up the spilled water. 

Constructs didn’t do that - they didn’t switch tasks without external instruction. They didn’t gesture, they certainly didn’t feel guilt, or chagrin, or anything else for that matter, and they didn’t apologise. 

If Harrow had been there, Gideon would have felt too self-conscious to do what she was considering, but Harrow wasn’t there, and Gideon figured that after everything, she’d earned a little crazy time. So she tipped her glass slightly, pouring more of the beverage out onto the table, and in the spilled liquid, she drew a simple 3x3 grid with one finger, put a ‘O’ in the middle space, and waited for one of the constructs to come over and clear up the mess.

She only had to wait for a moment for a skeleton to amble over with a cloth. She raised a hand to stop it from actually wiping down the table.

“Your move,” she said, feeling totally stupid, and expecting the construct to just wait patiently for her to get out of its way in that blank stupid manner that constructs had when something obstructed them from carrying out a task. Instead it lowered the cloth, looked furtively from side to side, as if checking that they were unobserved, and then cocked its head and - _fuck, she was right! -_ looked at her. Then, with one distal phalange, it made a delicate ‘X’ in one corner of her grid. Gideon put another ‘O’ just underneath the ‘X’, and the skeleton added a second ‘X’ in the empty square next to the first.

“No one programs a construct to play stupid kid’s games.” Gideon remarked, still needing absolute confirmation.

The construct - or, Gideon supposed, not actually a construct - the _skeleton_ shook its head.

“You’re a person!” Gideon exclaimed, still struggling to believe it, even though she’d been suspicious since first landing. The skeleton nodded. “Are you _all_ people?” another nod.

Gideon took a moment to consider the implications of this. 

“And you just… hang around and clean and do laundry and stuff? That sucks!”

The skeleton shrugged.

“So, are you like… a revenant?” The skeleton held out a hand, tilted it from side to side, a clear indication of ‘sort of’. 

“Weird. Look, I can’t keep thinking of you as _‘that skeleton’_. Do you have a name?”

Again the skeleton reached out a single finger, and drew three blobby letters in the spilled liquid on the table. 

“Bob?” she asked. Bob nodded, and then cast a quick look over Gideon’s shoulder, and hurriedly moved to clean off the table with the cloth with jerky ‘ _I’m just an animated bone construct, ignore me_ ’ motions, erasing both the noughts and crosses grid, and his name. 

Gideon turned around and saw that two more novitiates had entered the room. When they saw Gideon, they both stopped dead. It was the pair from the Eighth. In the lead was the bitchy looking kid in his antiseptic whites and chain mail so delicate as to be wholly ornamental, and no use whatsoever as any sort of armour. His cavalier was much older, with a vaguely disgruntled air. Unlike the nonsense mail his necromancer wore, the Eighth cavalier dressed in chipped bleached leathers that looked as though they’d seen genuine use. He had a robust build, which made the rapier at his side look even more stupid and spindly - not for the first time Gideon wondered why House cavaliers were stuck using such pointless weapons. The rapier suited the prissy, uptight Third cavalier, but Gideon found herself wishing that the cavalier of the Eighth used a two-hander like her own - he looked like he’d be a terror with a decent sword. Then again, Gideon would have not been able to resist fighting him in that case, and relations were already bad enough between the Ninth and Eighth houses without her getting involved.

“Please deal with the _shadow cultist,_ ” said the whey-faced necromancer in a voice that was unexpectedly deep and repressive, coming from his stupid teen face.

“Yes, Uncle,” said the cavalier. Gideon slipped her hands into her pockets, took a nugget of bone in each fist, ready for a fight - more than that, _spoiling_ for a fight. A proper fight, with bone and blade, not just the vicious verbal sniping she’d had from Harrow. The cavalier of the Eighth was no responsibility of hers, and she could beat him bloody without compunction.

So she was bitterly disappointed when he took only a couple of steps forward, and put his hands together, bowing over them to her. It was polite, though not apologetic. He had a lighter, rougher voice than his necromancer, somewhat hoarse, like he suffered from a lifelong cold or a smoker’s cough. 

“My uncle can’t eat with your kind around,” he said. “Please leave.”

Gideon had too much to think about, with the revelation about Bob and the other skeletons, to bother trying to puzzle out the oddities of the Eighth, like, _why did the cavalier have such a baby uncle, one the colour of mayonnaise?_ She’d finished eating, and Bob was gone, blending in with the other skeletons until she couldn’t pick out which one he’d been, if he was still in the room at all. _Damn_. She wondered if it would be rude to give the skeletons all name labels, so she could tell them apart? It wasn’t like the Ninth didn’t already have a reputation for being weird about bones.

With a diffident shrug, Gideon rose and swept out of the dining room, past the Eighth. The necromancer spared her the temptation of ‘accidentally’ elbowing him in the ribs as she passed by flattening himself against the far wall of the corridor. Weirdo.

She decided she may as well just go back to her rooms; she couldn’t avoid them, or Harrow, forever. When she got there, she found no sign of her cavalier, but a familiar nauseating sweetness filled the air, and when she checked the laundry basket, sure enough, her discarded robe was in there. 

For a moment, Gideon felt like her blood had turned to ice water. Why had she assumed that Harrow left the facility altogether, just because she’d left the laboratory where Gideon had been? She could be hurt!

But a quick check of the cord around her throat assured Gideon that she still had the key. Harrow must have left the facility to bring Gideon’s robes back here. So Harrow was out of the facility, and safe, for now - Gideon would just have to keep a closer eye on her in future.

Ugh, there was a reason she’d left those robes behind. They were stinking the place up, and Gideon wasn’t going to go hassle one of the skeletons - as far as she could see, they already had a shitty enough deal - so she fished the olfactorily offensive fabric out of the heap, and cast around the room for some way to dispose of it. Eventually, she figured out that the windows could be levered open - sticking her head out the window, she saw that it looked out over a sheer drop, straight into the water below, so she shrugged and tossed the robes out. After a moment’s thought, she decided to leave the window open and let the room air out. It was still quite a novelty being on a planet with atmosphere, where windows were even a thing, even if the wet, salt-water smell of the air blowing in from outside brought with it reminders of things best left forgotten.


	14. Chapter 14

After she’d finally washed all trace of apple-goo, and lingering stickiness from whatever the pink drink had been from her hands, Gideon realised that it would take a while for the room to air out, and so the afternoon nap she’d been semi-contemplating wouldn’t be on the cards for her today. She knew that it would be too risky to go back to the training room - the Third had been hanging around so there was too much chance that she’d be disturbed if she went there - but having seen a bit more of the sheer scale of Canaan House, Gideon was hopeful she might find a quiet corner where she could train with her sword without getting caught. 

She fiddled with the base of her trunk until she could remove her two-hander, and then she went about the process of securing it to her back - she usually carried it on her hip, as it was easier to draw that way (well, she usually didn’t carry it at all, except when she was training with Aiglamene, because Priamhark and Pelleamena had _opinions_ about the Reverend Daughter carrying anything larger than a ceremonial dagger), but she had an inkling that if she got it just right, she could strap the sword to her back, under her robes, and no one would be any the wiser, even if she did pass someone in the halls. After a few minutes fussing in front of the mirror, she was ready to leave. 

She headed for one of the terraces, reasoning - as only someone who’d lived their whole life safely inside a pressurised installation, below the surface of an atmosphere-less rock would - that everyone would find the wide open sky of the outdoors as off-putting as she did, and leave them alone. 

Apparently some of the Houses were more comfortable with wide open spaces than Gideon had anticipated; she’d been making her way through the terraces for some time, looking for one which was both remote, and not overlooked too badly by any windows, when she came across the Seventh necromancer.

She was entirely alone, no creepy cavalier-mountain in sight. Lying in a chair, she looked wasted and tired, dwarfed by the ridiculous hat on her head, which cast shade over most of her body. _Why was she even out here, if she wanted to avoid the sun?_ Gideon wondered, knowing that she was being uncharitable, but frustrated that - in this huge, sprawling corpse of a palace, occupied by less than twenty living humans, she couldn’t stop running into people when she wanted to be alone.

The Seventh necro looked like she was sleeping, and Gideon was surprised that she wasn’t cold - she was wearing a dress made of a thin, filmy fabric that did more to flatter her body than insulate it, and Gideon felt a little awkward seeing her basically undressed - by Ninth standards anyway - when she’d probably come out here to be alone as well. 

Gideon turned to go, before she disturbed the sleeping girl, but it was too late.

“Don’t go,” said the figure, her eyes fluttering open. “Thought so. Hello, Reverend Daughter! Can you come and put this chair’s back up straight for me? I’d do it myself, but I’m afraid that I’m not well, and some days, I don’t feel entirely up to it. Can I beg you that favour?”

“Sure,” Gideon shrugged, noting the fine sheen of sweat on the translucent-pale skin, and a certain shortness of breath. Whatever had caused her to collapse the day before had not been a passing infirmity, it seemed.

Gideon went to the chair and fiddled with the fastening, immediately emasculated by the difficulty of working a simple chair-latch.

“Thank you,” the waifish necromancer said, once she’d been propped up, before continuing, excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to meet a Black Vestal. Oh, I know you’ve probably got far more important things to be doing, but won’t you keep me company for a minute?” Though Gideon had been intending to leave, she found that she couldn’t resist the appeal in those wide, gentian eyes. With no other seating in evidence, Gideon lowered herself to the floor, sitting with legs crossed.

“Lady Dulcinea Septimus, Duchess of Rhodes,” the girl introduced herself, holding out a slender hand. Gideon decided that her day could stand to include a little more idle flirtation, so, remembering what Coronabeth had done earlier, Gideon took the proffered hand, and brought it to her lips, pressing a gentle kiss against the paper-thin skin.

“Call me Gideon,” she said, lingering just a moment before letting go of Dulcinea’s hand. 

“You know, I’ve read a lot about the Locked Tomb. I actually dreamed of joining the Ninth, when I was young. It seemed such a _romantic_ way to die. I must have been about thirteen… You see, I knew I was going to die then. I didn’t want anyone to look at me, and the Ninth House was so far away. I thought I could just have some time to myself and then expire very beautifully, alone, in a black robe, with everyone praying over me and being solemn. I changed my mind when I found out about the face paint - that isn’t my aesthetic - but if I’d known the Reverend Daughter would be so… _chivalrous_ , perhaps I’d have reconsidered. You’re not a bit like I expected the Ninth necromancer to be, you know.”

“I get that a lot.”

“I pictured the Ninth heir as being some creaky old nun. How old are you, _Gideon_?” Dulcinea lingered over the syllables of Gideon’s name, as if savouring their taste. 

“Eighteen.”

“Why, you’re just a kid!”

“I’m older than the Fourth,” she pointed out, only a little nonplussed by being called a child. Compared to almost everyone in the Ninth, she was basically still a fetus, but it stung more coming from a cute girl who she hadn’t estimated to be _that_ much older than herself. “And the Eighth necro, I think”

“Of course, I’m sorry. You’re not a child. But I feel so old right now. The Fourth especially have contributed to me feeling ancient. Tomorrow I might feel youthful, but today’s a bad day… and I feel like a gimp.”

Gideon was utterly thrown by the word _gimp,_ which was the only possible excuse for how tactlessly she blurted out, “what _is_ wrong with you?”, but Dulcinea didn’t seem to be offended.

“How much do you know about the Seventh House?”

“Not a great deal,” Gideon admitted.

“A flaw runs through our house. Genetic - blood cancer.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

“I’m afraid you’re about the only one who is. The Seventh House thinks my condition is an asset. They even wanted me to get married and keep the genes going - me! My genes couldn’t be worse; I wasn’t even supposed to live past twenty-five.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dulcinea paused for a moment, and Gideon worried that her questions had upset the frail necromancer.

“Sorry, we can talk about something else.”

“No, I don’t mind. It’s nice, to talk to someone who doesn’t find my tumours just _delightful._ ” Gideon shuddered. She’d never imagined that any of the other Houses could match the Ninth for creepiness, but it was starting to sound like the Seventh might give them a run for their money.

“When you don’t have it too bad - the cancer,” Dulcinea clarified, “when you can live to maybe fifty years - when your body’s dying from the inside out, and your blood cells are eating you alive the whole time… it makes for _such_ a necromancer, Gideon. A walking thanergy generator. If they could figure out some way to stop you when you’re mostly cancer and just a little bit woman, they would!”

“That’s awful,” Gideon said.

“Is it? They say my house loves beauty - they did, and they do - and there’s a kind of beauty in dying beautifully… in wasting away… half-alive, half-dead, within the very queenhood of your power.”

“That’s twisted,” Gideon said, without thinking, and then felt her cheeks flush under her paint as she realised what she’d said. “I mean… no offense.”

“Oh, you haven’t offended me, Gideon. Would you take your glasses off, please? For me? I’d like to see your eyes.”

That non-sequitur caught her so off-guard that Gideon found herself obeying without even thinking about it. She tucked the sunglasses into a pocket of her robe, and lifted her face so that Dulcinea could look into her eyes, and found herself scrutinised thoroughly, almost intimately. As she stared back into those implausibly blue eyes, even more electric without Gideon’s lenses dulling her vision, she saw Dulcinea’s eyes narrow with an interest that was almost calculating. 

“Oh, singular,” said Dulcinea quietly, more to herself than to Gideon. “Lipochrome… recessive. I like looking at people’s eyes,” she explained, smiling now. “They tell you such a lot. Your eyes are like gold coins… In fact, they remind me very much of someone I knew once.”

Dulcinea stopped, looking at Gideon’s face, seeing what Gideon knew must be a stricken expression. She felt like she’d been slapped in the face - she’d never even heard of anyone with eyes like hers, in long years of searching any records she could get her hands on.

“They do? Who was it? Only…” Gideon hesitated, but those blue eyes still held her fast, and they sparkled with conspiracy, as if they already shared a delicious secret - it was an expression which seemed to invite confession. “I’m an orphan, you see. I never knew who my parents were, and, well… if you did know someone… then maybe…?”

“I’m terribly sorry, Reverend Daughter. She was very old, and I haven’t seen her in an awfully long time. I thought she was dead for a while, but now I’m not so sure. Either way, I’m afraid there’s simply no possibility that you could be _hers_.”

Dulcinea put an odd emphasis on the word ‘hers’, the kind of emphasis that wanted to be followed with ‘ _...but…_ ’. Gideon waited, but Dulcinea said no more. Gideon must have misread her tone. 

Unaccountably disappointed, in spite of herself, Gideon started getting to her feet.

“Oh, Gideon… don’t go! Is that… is that a _sword_ strapped to your back?”

_Shit_

“Uh… busted, I guess?” Gideon was on her feet now, and seriously considering fleeing before this conversation could take any more unexpected turns.

“Is it _yours_?” 

“Yeah… you might call it a hobby. Not a lot of fun to be had on the Ninth.”

“Would you show me? Go on, indulge me. Lots of people do… but I want _you_ to. Draw your sword, Reverend Daughter.”

“It’s not really… I mean, it’s under my robes, and the scabbard isn’t properly rigged for a back carry, and…”

“Please?”

And that was how Gideon discovered that she entirely lacked the ability to say ‘no’ to a pretty girl who wanted to see her blade.

A couple of awkward minutes later, Gideon had - again - stripped down to her shirt and trousers, and manouvered her two-hander out of its scabbard. She held it in a basic ‘ready’ position, looking to Dulcinea to see her reaction. 

She wasn’t disappointed. The Seventh necromancer looked breathless with excitement - well, perhaps the breathlessness was more to do with her illness - but she was definitely excited. She looked so thrilled that Gideon half-expected her to clap her hands together like Teacher. 

“Do you want… I could show you a fight, if you like? I’m good at constructs, and it’s only a little bit cheating if I animate them myself.” Gideon didn’t know what possessed her to make the offer, but the words were out of her mouth before she even realised what she was saying. Aiglamene was the only person who'd ever seen her wield her blade, and Aiglamene was not the sort to swoon adoringly over her skill, in fact, she would probably choke on her own tongue if she ever tried to say anything wholly uncritical. So Gideon wanted the opportunity to show off.

“That sounds _incredible.”_

With a grin of unalloyed delight, Gideon reached into her pockets, gathered up a handful of bone chips, and got to work.

She wasn’t sure what sixth sense it was that made her look upward to the huge glass windows overlooking the terrace, several minutes later when she was surrounded by the debris of more than a dozen defeated constructs, but in one empty frame where the glass was almost entirely gone, a cloaked figure stood: skull-painted, a hood further obscuring the veiled face, one hand on the hilt of a black rapier. 

Gideon stood at the centre of a circle of destruction, and for a second that emasculated minutes, she and Harrowhark looked at each other. Then the cavalier of the Ninth turned in a dramatic swish of black, and disappeared. 

Gideon shivered as though her blood had turned to ice, in spite of the hot sun and her exertion. With only the barest backwards glance at where Dulcinea still sat, Gideon grabbed up her abandoned robe, wrapping it around her blade in a hasty attempt at concealing what she carried, and then she fled the terrace at a speed only slightly short of a run, mumbling vague apologies over her shoulder as she went.


	15. Chapter 15

When Gideon got back to the Ninth quarters, there was no sign of Harrow. Gideon wasn’t sure whether she was glad about that or not, but at the very least, it gave her time to stash her sword somewhere that Harrow hopefully wouldn’t be able to get to it. Gideon _loved_ her sword, so letting Harrow damage or dispose of it was out of the question. She settled for putting it in the closet by the bed - it was heavy, and still in relatively good condition, and with a few alternating layers of bone and blood wards, it should keep her sword safe enough. 

Gideon lay in bed for a while, but she wasn’t tired enough to nap. She tried reading one of her comics, but the familiar plot failed to soothe her. She explored the rest of the suite of rooms, finding the small room - little more than a nook with a door - where Harrow had apparently dragged her belongings and the bedding from the unused cavalier cot at the end of Gideon’s bed. She took a little time to poke around the bathroom, identifying the sink and the shower, but deliberately ignoring the coffin-sized recess in the floor which could apparently be filled with water for purposes of - immersion?. Even if the idea of soaking in her own muck had appealed, it was too reminiscent of the ceremonial pool back on the Ninth for Gideon to even consider it.

With hours left to go before dinner, Gideon had to admit that she was bored. She’d never really had any significant amount of time to herself before, and what time she had been able to steal, she’d looked forward to and planned down to the minute, splitting any free moments between training with her sword and perfecting her animaphilia. Well, she didn’t dare get her sword out again just yet, but perhaps she’d find something interesting in the library to occupy her. She grabbed a notebook and pen, and set off.

She wasn’t sure where the library was, but she hadn’t gone far from her rooms before she encountered one of the skeletons.

“Hi,” she said, giving what she hoped was a friendly wave. The skeleton stumbled a bit, as if in surprise, but then continued walking, doing a very good impression of someone that hadn’t heard her. Not Bob, then. “Uh, I know you’re not a construct. I just wanted to ask a favour.”

Like Bob had, this skeleton looked around furtively, checking if they were alone. The hairs on the back of Gideon’s neck prickled - she could almost have sworn that the skeleton was _scared._ Evidently they weren’t supposed to let on that they were people, not just constructs, but why? Gideon couldn’t imagine Teacher being cruel, even if there was any obvious way to punish a skeleton. Still, regardless of why the skeleton was scared, Gideon had no intention of causing anyone any harm, or upset.

“I’m sorry, you don’t need to worry - I won’t tell anyone! Only, could you help me find the library?”

The skeleton raised a finger to their teeth in a clear request for silence, but then they nodded, and turned to lead her down the hallway. Gideon waited, and followed at enough of a distance that it hopefully wouldn’t be obvious to a casual observer that she was following them, but her caution proved unnecessary - they passed no one. Eventually, the skeleton indicated a doorway with a brief tilt of their head before carrying on down the hallway.

“Thanks,” Gideon whispered, hoping that the skeleton heard her. 

When she opened the door and went in, Gideon found that the library was a huge room - possibly about as large as Drearburh itself, and absolutely crammed to bursting with shelves. Just the first shelf that Gideon saw held as many books as the whole library back on the Ninth. Gideon might have been a necromancer, but she wasn’t a nerd - this was something which was very important to her - but even so, she couldn’t help getting just the teeniest bit excited about all the books. Any book that wasn’t from the Ninth was automatically forbidden knowledge, and therefore fascinating.

She wandered the stacks for a few minutes, pulling books off the shelves almost at random, picking anything which caught her eye, before settling at a table when her arms were too full to gather any further. 

First, she opened _Mixology - a guide to spirits,_ finding herself intrigued by there being a whole branch of necromancy she’d never heard of before (and, bonus, it was nothing at all to do with bones!) but it mainly seemed to be a discussion of different alchemical tinctures and preparations, composed of ingredients that Gideon was almost entirely unfamiliar with. 

Some of them were annotated in the margins, but the annotations were as cryptic as the rest. Next to the heading of a chapter on something called ‘Sours’, two people had scrawled some sort of conversation: 

_Petition to rename these to ‘Mercymorns’ - A_

And then in a different handwriting: _You should lay off her, bro. You know this sort of shit upsets Crissy._

In the first: _Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time worrying about what Cristabel thinks. - A_

And the second again: _You’re_ _just pissed because all the other necromancers get to bang their cavaliers and you're stuck with your brother. Would you just hook up with Mercy already? You're always talking about her, and then maybe both of you would stop trying to split me and Crissy up._

There was more, but at ‘bang their cavaliers’ Gideon slammed the book shut, an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach which was - absolutely certainly - nausea at the thought of having sex with Harrow. Sure, Gideon had proposed marriage to her multiple times, but that had just been to get the Reverend Mother and Father off their backs. The closest thing to intimacy she'd anticipated from any marriage to Harrowhark Nova was both of them sticking a DNA sample in the same vat womb.

One of the other books she’d grabbed, _Womb With a View,_ Gideon had actually picked up for precisely this purpose, wanting more information on the technology which she’d only ever heard of, but hoped someday to procure for the Ninth, not wanting her and/or Harrow to be put in the position of having to create an heir the _old fashioned way._ But she couldn’t deal with thinking about that right now, so she pushed both _Mixology_ and _Womb With a View_ to one side, and stuck _Chicken Soup for the Souls; 101 top recipes for summoning libations_ on top, so she wouldn't have to look at them any more.

She started on _Spirit Fingers; Gesture in Exorcism_ , but had only been reading it for a few minutes before the diagrams of different hand placements gave her an idea. She abandoned her reading table and started scanning the shelves again, this time looking for something specific. 

It took some doing - the majority of the library was given over to necromantic texts, with only small sections for anything else - but she found it. Even more interestingly, the book she eventually settled on was considerably less dusty than the ones around it, which made her more optimistic about her half-formulated plan. 

Unsurprisingly, considering that at least half of the penitents and anchorites were under a vow of silence at any given time anyway, the Ninth didn’t put much effort into facilitating communication for those among her congregation who couldn’t hear, or couldn’t speak, but Gideon was vaguely aware from offhand comments in some of her magazines that the same wasn’t true of the other Houses. The Sixth, in particular, appeared to have a thriving community of people who spoke with fingers rather than vocal cords.

Skeletons may not have vocal cords, but they definitely had fingers, and Gideon had been wondering how they communicated amongst themselves. This well-thumbed and recently used ‘Auslan’ dictionary was most likely a clue. She took the book back to the table she’d claimed, and was surprised to find that two more of the tables in the little reading area were now occupied, by the pairs from the Fourth and Fifth Houses.

When they saw her approach, the Fifth stood, and moved to intercept her. The Fourth shrank in their seats, as if they thought that making themselves look small would make it less obvious that they were staring at her. 

“Ah, Reverend Daughter!” The Fifth cavalier held out a hand. “Magnus the Fifth, and this is my wife and adept, Abigail Pent,”

The _wife and adept_ made Gideon freeze. Why was it, on the day that she’d finally been forced to face the fact that there would be no hope of any reconciliation between herself and her cavalier, she was also doomed to be confronted at every turn by improper cavalier/necromancer relationships?

Still, all the more reason to try to develop friendships with the other houses. If they were going to be stuck here for some time, then she wanted more people to talk to than just Harrow - especially as it looked like the skeletons might not be willing to speak to her openly. Pasting a smile on her face, she reached out to shake Magnus’ hand, with only a momentary hesitation, which she hoped he hadn’t noticed.

“Call me Gideon,” she said.

“Delighted to meet you,” said the Fifth necromancer - Abigail - holding out her own hand, which Gideon shook in turn. 

“And those are Isaac Tettares and Jeannemary Chatur, adept and cavalier for the Fourth,” Magnus added, indicating the terrible teens.

Said teens responded by sinking even further down in their chairs, lowing in slow, hurt-animal noises “Magnus! Maaaagnus! Don’t mention us!”

“Do forgive us,” Magnus continued, apparently unconcerned at the sounds of imminent demise coming from the teens’ table. “We’re a bit short on black priests in the Fourth and the Fifth, and my valiant Fourth companions are, er, a bit overcome.”

“ _Nooooo, Magnus, don’t say we’re overcome._ ” moaned the awful teen cavalier, sotto voce.

Gideon gave a polite nod, hoping to extricate herself from whatever mortal insult was being visited upon the Fourth through sheer dint of their being mentioned. It wasn’t that she hadn't been looking forward to spending time with people who were nothing to do with the Ninth - it was just that the other Houses were all so noisy, and chatty, and the bustle was rather too much of a good thing to someone accustomed to the stillness and hush of Drearburh. She returned to her table, but her hopes of solitude were dashed when she looked up to see Abigail taking the seat opposite her, Magnus standing at her side with a look of amused tolerance.

“Reverend Daughter…” Abigail began, in a tone of barely-suppressed eagerness.

“Gideon,” Gideon insisted.

“Gideon - I couldn’t help but notice you’ve got a book on exorcisms there. Are you perhaps haunted?” she paused, just long enough to give Gideon an assessing look, but not long enough to allow Gideon to interrupt, “No - I don’t think so - there aren’t any of the indications. Though… maybe a little something. In the hands?” She looked to her husband as if for confirmation, but Magnus simply shrugged, and Abigail turned her attention back to Gideon. “I definitely caught some very disparate spirit energy when your shuttle landed, but maybe that’s traditional for your House. Anyway, just wanted to say, if you do have any sort of a spirit problem, you must always feel absolutely free to speak to me. I do _love_ a good exorcism!” This last was said with an enthusiasm which Gideon herself reserved for her sword, her biceps, and her pictures of naked women. 

On first glance, Gideon had assumed the Fifth necromancer to be a little stuffy, probably rather uptight, a typical Fifth House bureaucrat - but the look in Abigail’s eyes when she talked about ghosts and exorcisms was positively feral. And this was only the first time they’d ever spoken! Kindly Prince only knew what she'd be like when you got to know her a little better. Gideon thought she might quite get along with someone who could go from zero to unhinged in a matter of moments, and she also found herself reevaluating her first impressions of the mild and amiable Magnus, wondering what kind of person would be husband and cavalier both to such a woman. 

“Uh, thanks,” she said, as Magnus none-too-subtly dragged his wife back to their own table. 

“Don’t mind my wife,” he said fondly, looking back at Gideon over his shoulder, “she can’t help getting involved if she gets even the slightest whiff of some ghost action!”


	16. Chapter 16

Gideon did her best to ignore the teens’ whispered - but still completely audible - conversation as she turned her attention back to her own studies, but she couldn’t help hiding a smile at certain things she overheard.

“... _your biceps are perfectly fine_ ,” said the adept.

“ _But hers are huge! And she’s a_ necromancer _! It’s not fair!_ ” whined the nasty girl. 

She’d nearly ignored the book, titled Auslan-English Dictionary, when she’d seen it on the shelf - only deciding to take a look when it had clearly been used far more regularly than any other book in its section, or in fact, the library as a whole. It certainly had not looked promising at first, not least because Gideon didn’t have the foggiest what ‘English’ actually was. It was only from a note hand-scrawled on the flyleaf that Gideon discovered that Auslan was an acronym for _Alternative Use Sign Language Adapted for Necromancy._

Luckily, Gideon could read the ‘English’. Less luckily, she swiftly discovered that reading a dictionary was no way to learn a language. She noted down a few signs which she thought might be particularly handy - but in spite of this book being supposedly ‘ _Adapted for Necromancy_ ’ there were no signs for even the most basic necromantic concepts, so she wouldn’t learn what she needed to be able to work out how exactly the skeletons were - born? Constructed? Resurrected? - by using Auslan.

Perhaps the Sixth House adept and cavalier would be able to teach her more? Gideon made a mental note to seek them out. At least it was looking like she wouldn’t be bored during her time here, even if Harrow didn’t say another word to her, and she decided not to set foot back in the facility through the hatch. 

When Gideon’s brain could no longer make sense of the tiny diagrams in the Auslan-English Dictionary, she put it to one side, and turned to Wards With Friends, to see if there was anything in there about thanergy wards.

There wasn’t, but the book still managed to keep her attention for some time, and she scribbled down a few ideas, in case she did decide to have another go at the apple challenge. She wasn’t sure how long she spent reading, but the sky outside the windows was dark by the time Magnus came over to her table, clearing his throat to get her attention.

“Ah, Gideon. We were just going to head across for dinner - would you like to join us?”

Gideon stretched in her chair, feeling her neck and shoulders complain about the hours hunched over the little desk. She had been intending to try and find Harrow before dinner, but that was before she’d lost track of time, and also before she’d compounded her earlier crimes by getting her sword out in public. Maybe giving Harrow a little longer to cool off would be no bad thing. Even if Harrow missed dinner, Gideon was sure she could scrounge up something from the kitchen for her later.

“Sure,” Gideon said, standing. She picked up her notebook, and turned to follow Magnus out of the room. Abigail was already in the corridor, ushering the teens ahead - though they didn’t need much in the way of ushering, teenage appetites being what they were.

The dining hall was as empty as Gideon had found it at earlier meals, but the Fourth and Fifth quickly filled the space with noise and energy. Though the nasty teens still wouldn’t speak to Gideon directly, and looked away instantly when she caught them staring, they had at least unwound enough to talk to Abigail and Magnus while she was there. 

Gideon allowed the conversation to flow around her, contributing little as she ate the food the skeletons brought. She was careful not to acknowledge the skeletons who waited on them, but it still felt rude to talk over them, so she concentrated mostly on her meal. 

She was about half finished when the pair from the Sixth walked in. They moved to sit at another table, but Magnus waved them over with a smile. Gideon could see that the cavalier was dubious, but she made no protest as her necromancer took the seat next to Gideon, leaving her to sit opposite. Gideon noticed that she angled herself so that she could keep an eye on both her necromancer, and the entrance to the room, and had to admire the way she managed to eat without apparently needing to look at her plate, or take her hand off the hilt of her rapier. 

Gideon was also interested to note the reproachful glare Magnus shot his wife, each time she took breath to speak. 

At one point, he even whispered, _“let the poor boy eat, at least. He’s all skin and bones!”,_ and if Gideon had not known that they came from different Houses, she’d have sworn that the Fourth teens were his, because they certainly shared a common ability to whisper in such a way that no one in the vicinity could avoid hearing every word.

Eventually, when Gideon had finished her meal entirely, but was enjoying the show too much to leave, and the Sixth necromancer had eaten about half of his, and was toying disinterestedly with the remainder, Abigail Pent could contain herself no longer.

“Master Warden,” she beamed, “I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally have the chance to speak to you, face to face. I wondered if I could pick your brains regarding accessing some of the older primary sources in your library…”

The effect on the ‘Master Warden’ was instantaneous. He abandoned his fork, pushed away his plate, and buried his face in his hands.

“Lady Abigail Pent, I presume?” he groaned, words muffled against the palms of his hands.

“Ah, so you do recall my letters, excellent!”

“ _I_ certainly do _,”_ muttered the cavalier of the Sixth, hand gripping the hilt of her rapier a little more tightly than it had been previously. She was much better at whispering than either Magnus or the teens - Gideon barely heard her, and the Fifth, sitting at the other end of the table, probably heard nothing at all.

“Lady Pent,” the Master Warden said with some exasperation, coming out from behind his hands. “Surely with such an abundance of primary sources at your fingertips here on the First, you can find better ways to occupy yourself than trying to persuade me to change _centuries-old_ policy regarding the storage of sensitive records?”

“Ah, but if I give you any respite, then I’ll be undoing years of work in wearing you down,” Abigail said with a chuckle, but then she relented, allowing the change of subject, “it truly is a pleasure to meet you, Master Warden, and I shall try not to pester you too much while we’re here.”

“Don’t want him running away every time he sees us!” Magnus interjected.

“This is my husband, Magnus the Fifth,” Abigail continued, before proceeding to go around the table, introducing everyone in turn, including Gideon.

“Palamedes Sextus,” the Sixth necromancer responded, “and my cavalier, Camilla Hect. You must call me Palamedes - we’re all equals here, as postulants to lyctorhood.”

“Well put,” Abigail responded, “and of course, call me Abigail. I know Gideon here isn’t keen on all that formality either! If even the Ninth can relax protocol a little here, then I see no reason why the rest of us shouldn’t follow suit. After all - we may all be spending quite a lot of time together.”

 _Oh fuck,_ Gideon thought, with intense gratitude that Harrow wasn’t present to hear this - if she found out that not only was Gideon not standing on her dignity around the other houses, but was in fact a catalyst for a general lack of formality between all the houses… well, that would be just another thing she’d never hear the end of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all should go read Caveat Lector by heliocharis, because it is thoroughly brilliant and hilarious, and it tickled me so much that I basically decided to make it canon backstory for this fic.


	17. Chapter 17

In an attempt to steer the conversation away from how much Gideon sucked at being a properly stuffy Ninth House nun, Gideon turned to Abigail and asked, “what do you study?”

“Ah, well!” Abigail turned an intense, enthusiastic gaze on Gideon, as her husband fondly muttered _‘here we go.’_

“My studies have been focused on the period of time post-resurrection, pre-cohort for a number of years now - _although they’d be going a damn sight faster if I had access to all the research materials I needed -”_ this was aimed past Gideon, directly at Palamedes, “so of course the necrosaints are of prime interest to me, and the Sixth have some texts and correspondence that we know have been written, or directly handled, by the lyctors themselves. Being here is honestly such a thrill! If only we knew for certain who was still alive, and who had gone into the river - I’m sure there are more than enough traces here to attempt a summoning…”

“Traces?” Gideon asked, interested in spite of herself - she knew so little spirit magic, and had always regretted it. Perhaps if the Ninth had better spirit magicians, they’d have gotten more out of her mother’s spirit than just her name. Perhaps if Gideon could learn more, she could call her mother’s spirit back again.

“Oh, yes. If our records are correct, then the lyctors all spent several hundred years here in the First House, so the potential for resonance is still there - even after most of a myriad. I expect I’ll be writing papers for years on what I find here!”

“Do the necrosaints write many academic papers?” Gideon wondered.

“Gosh no, not for many centuries now. I’m sure they’re all far too busy for that sort of thing!”

“So… when you ascend to lyctor…” Gideon asked.

“Well,” Abigail replied, after a brief pause, “it’s obviously a huge honour to be considered, and I wouldn’t dream of not answering the Emperor’s call, even if it hadn’t been a complete dream come true for me to visit Canaan House, but if I’m being honest, I’m not certain that lyctorhood is my path. I’m really very happy with my life as it is, and there’s every indication that only adepts are able to ascend - I just couldn’t imagine living for a myriad without Magnus at my side!”

In that moment, as Magnus took Abigail’s hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze, Gideon saw in her peripheral vision as Palamedes looked to Camilla, as if reassuring himself that she was still there, noticed the way that Jeannemary and Isaac leaned in to press their shoulders together, in perfect unconscious unison, and Gideon felt very alone, in a way she was unaccustomed to.

It was different - a sharper stab to the heart, a more preoccupying agony - to be alone here, surrounded by necromancer/cavalier relationships clearly built on trust, and affection, and undying loyalty. At least back on the Ninth, Gideon hadn’t been faced with constant reminders of everything she couldn’t have. 

It was hard not to feel angry with Harrow in that moment. She’d been so goddamned persistent in demanding to be Gideon’s cavalier, but now more than ever, Gideon saw that a cavalier wasn’t just a necromancer’s strong sword arm, but the other half of themselves. Harrow couldn’t be that for Gideon, and clearly didn’t want to try, so why appoint herself as Gideon’s cavalier at all? Why tie herself into a union that was supposed to be every bit as intimate and committed as a marriage, with someone she hated?

It was too much. Gideon couldn’t stay here, the lone solitary necromancer amongst these pairs. Excusing herself, Gideon rose from the table, leaving the room via the door the skeletons brought food from, rather than the hallway which led back to the atrium and the rest of Canaan House.

Maybe Harrow would always hate her. Maybe Gideon would always be alone, without family, or a true wife or cavalier. Maybe Gideon would never even have a friend. But she would always have her duty, and right now, her duty was making sure that Harrow attended to her basic physical needs - because Harrow couldn’t be trusted to do so herself. 

Gideon quickly found the kitchen. It was was huge, and there were at least a dozen skeletons, cleaning dishes, chopping vegetables, and carrying out other tasks. Gideon wondered just how many skeletons there were here - and what they all did when they weren’t feeding and cleaning up after a bunch of visitors from the other houses.

“Hey, don’t mind me,” she said “I just wanted to grab a snack for later. Hope that’s okay.”

None of the skeletons responded, or even acknowledged her words. _Oh well,_ she shrugged and moved over to the shelves of food on the far side of the room, trying to decide what to take.

What there was, was there in abundance, so she didn’t have to worry about taking something which couldn’t be spared. Had she been taking food for herself, Gideon would probably have pinched one of everything - she was already anticipating how miserable it would be to return to the Ninth, and an endless diet of snow leeks, nutrient paste, and gruel. In a single day at Canaan House she’d doubled the number of different foods she’d ever eaten, and with the variety of produce she could see here, she couldn’t wait to try it all.

But she remembered how Harrow had always given away her peppermint candies, and had screwed her face up that one time when Gideon had been given a rare treat of sugared water with a drop of lemon, and had tried to share it with her. Harrow didn’t even eat the salty black sauce that they sometimes served alongside the snow leeks on the Ninth, preferring to eat hers plain. Confronting Harrow with a huge variety of unfamiliar flavours and textures would not be the best strategy to encourage her to eat.

In the end, she chose a couple of fist-sized loaves of bread, a tube of nutrient paste, and (probably over-optimistically) a small wedge of a soft, waxy substance which Gideon recognised as cheese, from her comics, and which had the mildest flavour of all the cheeses Gideon sampled while perusing the shelves.

She put her haul on a plate, covered it over with a bowl, and peeked back into the dining room. Relieved to find that everyone else had finished eating and dispersed, Gideon made her way back to the Ninth quarters.

It would be no good to simply leave the food out - Harrow was as likely to toss it out the window as she was to actually eat. She’d have to wait for Harrow to come back. Anxiety made Gideon check the small cupboard-like space where Harrow’s belongings were, but they were still there, so she knew Harrow would have to come back eventually, to change her robes and refresh her paint, if nothing else. 

Gideon took her time cleaning off her paint, poking with irritation at the scattering of pimples left behind. None of her visions of herself getting to know a cute girl better, maybe Coronabeth, or Dulcinea, involved her having pizza-face. Then she fussed with the pillows on her bed, experimenting with ways to stack and layer them, so that she could sit upright in obscene comfort. Settling down to wait, she pulled out her notebook and tried practicing a few of the signs she’d noted down; bringing her hands together in _friend,_ brushing one hand against the other for _safe,_ touching the index finger of one flat hand to her chin for _secret_. She hoped that with a little practice, she’d at least be able to reassure the skeletons that she meant them no harm, and didn’t intend to put them at risk.

Possibly it was unnecessary for her to learn to perform the signs herself - the skeletons could clearly hear and understand when she spoke, so she only needed to be able to understand their responses, but it just felt more polite this way. 

Gideon must have nodded off somewhere along the way, because the next thing she knew, she was startling awake as the door to her chamber creaked open, admitting a slender, black-robed figure. 

  
  



	18. Chapter 18

“Harrow?”

“Who do you think? Moron.”

“Nice to see you too. Where have you been?”

“Do you care?”

Gideon sighed. She was barely awake, and - in spite of Harrow’s cutting words - the whole exchange retained something of a dreamlike quality.

“Of course I care. Did you eat?”

Harrow’s silence was answer enough. Gideon hauled herself out of bed with some difficulty. The pillows which had been propping her up before she fell asleep had transformed during her unconsciousness, becoming enveloping and inescapable. She swam out of them, and slid off the side of the bed, staggering to her feet, limbs still drunken with somnolence.

She retrieved the food she’d stashed away earlier. Harrow had closed the door, and the room was too dark for Gideon to be able to see Harrow’s face, but she didn’t need to see it to know that Harrow would be watching Gideon's fumbling with scorn. Harrow - when she slept at all - awoke fully and instantly at the slightest disturbance. The fact that Gideon took time, and caffeine, to come to full wakefulness was just another sign that the Reverend Daughter was venal and spoiled and wholly unfit for her sacred duties, as far as Harrow was concerned.

She removed the bowl covering the plate, and held it out for Harrow to take. Harrow didn’t.

“What is this?” She asked, instead

“Uh, bread, cheese, a bit of nutrient paste - it’s #7, I know you hate that one the least.”

“No, I mean what _is_ this? Why are you shoving a plate in my face at 3am?”

“Why are you only just going to sleep at 3am?”

“Bold of you to assume I was going to sleep.”

“ _Harrow…_ are you trying to kill me?”

“When I try to kill you, you’ll know about it.”

Gideon knew she should have been worried about the ‘when’, but she let it slide. 

“Will you just eat, and sleep, for me?”

“Nonagesimus,” Harrow said, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. I truly and dearly long for the day that you realise that only ritual suicide can cleanse my House of your stain.”

“Well that day ain’t today, sunshine, and I’m still Reverend Daughter, so if you won’t eat because I ask you to, then you will when I order you. Eat, Harrow. Just fucking eat something before you keel over.”

“As my liege commands,” Harrow said flatly, taking the plate and heading for her sleeping-nook. 

“Hell no,” Gideon said, “I’m not falling for that. Eat where I can see you.”

With a barely-audible huff, Harrow sank into the chair by the dresser and started nibbling grudgingly at a corner of one of the bread rolls. Harrow eating the bread dry made Gideon thirsty just watching her, so she went to the bathroom and filled both of the glasses there with water from one of the taps, placing one down on the dresser at Harrow’s elbow, and taking sips from the other as she settled herself back into bed. 

Gideon’s eyes were adjusting to the light, enough that she could start to make out some of the face beneath Harrow’s hood. Her paint was catastrophically smudged, barely even there at all, and her face looked swollen.

“Harrow - have you been in a fight? Did someone hit you?”

“What?” Harrow said through a mouthful of bread. 

“Your face - you’re a mess.”

Harrow’s only response was to pull her hood down further over her face, and continue grimly and methodically chewing away at the bread.

Several more attempts to get Harrow to tell her what was going on were met with passive-aggressive chewing sounds. Gideon knew that they were passive-aggressive, because Harrow did not make noise when eating. She had once said, quite caustically, that eating was a disgusting enough process already without broadcasting your actions. Gideon had thought this rather unfair at the time, considering that she’d only been chewing with her mouth open because Harrow had broken her nose the day before.

Eventually, Gideon resigned herself to the fact that she was either going to have to haul herself back out of bed again, or let her curiosity go unsatisfied. If it was just curiosity, then Gideon probably would have gone back to sleep - but if Harrow was genuinely hurt, then Gideon needed to know. 

“What are you doing?” Harrow asked, warily, as soon as Gideon was standing again.

“Let me see your face.”

“Absolutely not,” Harrow launched herself to her feet, knocking over the chair in her haste, before gripping her hood in two clenched fists against any attempt Gideon might have made to pull it away from her face, and backing away step-for-step as Gideon approached.

“Harrow… if there’s been unsanctioned duelling, then whichever cavalier it was, I can demand satisfaction from their necromancer. I’m not having people think they can push us around, just because we’re the smallest House.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Harrow said. She’d backed up all the way to the wall now, and her voice had taken on a slightly panicked note.

“One of the necromancers then? I got definite bitch vibes off that pasty Third adept…”

“I fell! I just fell, okay? I misjudged the solidity of a patch of floorboards and I fell and I’m not hurt, so you don’t need to worry.”

Before Gideon could get another word in, Harrow fled to her cupboard and shut herself in. Gideon considered following, but Harrow hadn’t moved like she was injured, and if Gideon barged her way into the tiny space that Harrow had staked out for herself in the Ninth quarters, if she violated that sanctuary, then Gideon knew that Harrow would find herself somewhere utterly remote to hole up, and they’d be back to how it had been on the Ninth, only this time, Gideon wouldn’t even be able to check in with Aiglamene behind Harrow’s back and make sure that she was okay.

Gideon was pretty certain that Harrow was lying about having fallen, but what was she going to do - get out the thumbscrews? And this place was a deathtrap, so it _was_ possible she really was telling the truth. Gideon would have to trust that Harrow would tell her, if it was something she truly needed to know; Harrow might not care about her own welfare, but if there’d been an incident with one of the other Houses, then surely Harrow would see that Gideon had to know - to protect the Ninth’s reputation, if nothing else?

Gideon went back to bed, but although she’d been drowsy only moments before, now she couldn’t get back to sleep. She lay awake for what felt like hours, listening vainly for any sound from Harrow’s room, and staring at the ceiling with eyes that she tried to convince herself watered from tiredness, and nothing more.


	19. Chapter 19

In the morning - the _early_ morning, judging by the thin light leaking in through the windows, Gideon was awoken with a sharp blow to the back.

For a moment, she was confused about where she was, and then she remembered the long spell of sleeplessness, the irrational conviction that Harrow would sneak out in the morning, and get herself hurt or killed before Gideon even awoke. After dozing off a couple of times into dreams of finding Harrow's broken body at the bottom of a collapsed flight of stairs, or impaled on shattered furniture beneath a hole in the ceiling, she’d decided to sleep in front of the door to Harrow’s nook, so that her cavalier would not be able to leave without waking her. The pain which had woken her came from Harrow trying, none too gently, to open her door.

Harrow had managed to lever the door open enough to stick her head out - cracking one of Gideon’s ribs in the process - and now she looked down at Gideon with incredulity.

“Get out of my way, you oaf!”

Wincing, Gideon levered herself upright against the wall, turning her attention to the process of mending her cracked rib while Harrow stood over her, looking disgusted. This morning, Harrow was meticulously painted, though Gideon could still see a slight puffiness around Harrow’s eyes that made Gideon suspect that someone had, in fact, punched her cavalier in the nose, whatever nonsense tale she’d spun about broken floorboards.

Whoever it was, Gideon hoped that Harrow had shown them what she was made of, and ripped their fucking tits off. Gideon might not be able to avoid hurting Harrow, but that didn't mean that she'd condone anyone else harming her. 

“What, so locking someone in a room is only cool when you do it?” Gideon grumbled, getting to her feet now that she could breathe without wincing. “I’ll make you a deal. You stick by my side - no more of the disappearing act - and you eat, and you sleep. If you do that, then I’ll go back down through the hatch and I will do my damnedest to beat those challenges.”

Harrow’s eyes lit up, and Gideon rushed to clarify, “I’m not saying you’ve changed my mind about becoming a lyctor - I still have no intention of doing anything of the sort. This is just a suggestion that we defer the argument, for now. Until the moment that the decision has to be made, our goals aren’t in direct opposition, at least, so why borrow trouble?”

“You will devote yourself to the challenges?”

“Within reason. I’m not a machine; I can’t do that sort of advanced necromancy all day every day, and pushing myself to continue when I’m exhausted is counterproductive. Besides, whether I ascend or not, I’m sure some of the other adepts will. Even if no one ascends, we’re here with the heirs to each of the Houses - we could do worse with our time than building closer ties to them.”

“Why does your ambition only manifest itself when it comes to chatting up women?” Harrow snapped.

“Did I say anything about chatting anyone up? The Ninth would be stronger if we had allies among the other Houses. I think the Eighth are a lost cause, but I’m making progress with some of the others. Necromancy isn’t the only type of power, you know.”

“It’s the only kind that matters.”

“Look, Harrow. This is the best deal you’re going to get out of me. You do your job, and I’ll do mine. Do you agree, or not?”

“Fine. But hurry up and paint your face - we’re wasting the day.”

Gideon looked at the clock on their wall, and groaned. “Harrow, it’s not even 8am - you’ve had less than five hours sleep! The day is not being wasted.”

“Isn’t it? I’ve already wasted three minutes listening to your drivel.”

Gideon gave up and went to the bathroom to paint her face. She took her time, needing a few minutes to wake up and regroup before the inevitable argument she knew would happen when Harrow realised that Gideon’s first destination of the day would be breakfast, not the hatch.

When she went back to her trunk to take out some new robes for the day, Gideon found a small, paper-wrapped bundle that hadn’t been in her trunk before. She glanced up - Harrow wasn’t watching. She opened the bundle and found what looked like a clavicle - but was made of some chalky substance - plaster, maybe? - not bone. The note was short:

_Lab 3_

_\- Bob_

Gideon quickly changed into new robes, and tucked the note and the replica clavicle in her pocket, before heading for the door. As soon as she left the Ninth’s quarters, Harrow fell into her proper place, one step behind and to the side of her. Gideon reflected - not for the first time - that this protocol was a lot less comfortable when your cavalier was very possibly plotting your bloody murder. 

Harrow was so silent that Gideon couldn’t even hear her - if she hadn’t known Harrow was there, she would have thought herself to be alone. She had to resist the urge to keep turning around to check that Harrow was still following - and that she didn’t have a knife to Gideon’s unprotected back.

They reached the dining hall with no protestation from Harrow, though Gideon knew better than to hope this meant that Harrow wasn’t furious with her for delaying important necromantic work for something as trivial - to Harrow’s mind - as not starving. 

Gideon was delighted - although she knew Harrow would not be - to see the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Houses all sat together at the table they’d shared the night before. When they saw Gideon and Harrow enter, there was an amicable shuffling around the table, to make space for Gideon and Harrow to sit together. Gideon sat, and turned to subtly glare at Harrow until she followed suit. The breakfast was soup again, and more of the excellent bread, but instead of yesterdays sour bile-green, today’s soup was the vivid orange of healthy adrenal glands - though when she took an experimental sip, it seemed to be vegetable in origin.

The conversation picked up easily from where it had paused when they entered, with Sextus saying: “... and I’ve counted four so far, in addition to the hatch.”

“Do you think there’s value in cataloguing the rest of the locked doors, given that Teacher can only allow us to access the hatch?” Abigail asked.

“Oh,” Gideon said, hastily swallowing a mouthful of soup. “If you want a list of doors, we have a map”

“Do we?” Harrow said, with icy fury, hissing out of the corner of her mouth so that only Gideon would hear - at least they had half a hope of concealing from the other houses just how fraught their relationship was, and how unlike a relationship between an adept and their cavalier should be.

“Really, Rev… Gideon, that would be most helpful.” Palamedes said with a smile. 

Gideon and Harrow were sitting close enough on the bench that Gideon felt her tense at the over-familiar form of address. Gideon crossed the fingers of the hand not holding her spoon that Harrow wouldn’t challenge the Sixth to a duel on the spot for daring to call the Reverend Daughter 'Gideon'. She should have warned Harrow that she was going title-free amongst the other Houses, but then she’d have had to explain why - and Harrow wouldn’t thank her for either having noticed her discomfort at being called her full title, or for giving up the formality on her account. Thankfully, Harrow said nothing.

She also wasn’t eating. Gideon nudged her with a knee, before saying - “Harrow, the soup is delicious, don’t you think?”

Grudgingly, Harrow picked up her spoon and scooped up the most parsimonious dribble of soup she could. Gideon watched long enough to make sure that the spoon actually made it to her mouth, before returning to the conversation.

“No problem at all, we're more than happy to share! There weren’t any rules about not collaborating, after all, and I must confess that my own necromantic expertise is focused, rather than broad. I was totally stumped by the thalergy experiment in Lab One - has anyone else had a go at that yet?”

“Oh, well, we haven’t actually been down there ourselves yet,” said Abigail. “It sounds a tad dangerous for the children, and we don’t want to leave them all on their own up here until we’re a bit more settled in.”

“ _Nooo, Abigail_ ,” lowed Isaac, “ _don’t call us children!_ ”

“ _Don’t talk about us!_ ” echoed his cavalier. Gideon reflected that the Ninth’s child-rearing practices left a lot to be desired, but at least she and Harrow had never been such awful teens.

“Lab one, you said, Gideon?” Palamedes chimed in with interest. “Couldn’t get in there myself - the door appeared to be locked.”

“Oh,” Gideon replied, “it opened fine for me. You just step under the arch and the light goes green and the door opens.”

“The bulb by the door? It was red when we tried to enter.”

Gideon noticed how tense Harrow was beside her, remembered that Harrow must have entered Lab One after Gideon had left, to retrieve her robes, and came to a very unsatisfactory conclusion. 

“Ah, well, we didn’t have any problems getting in, and I’m sure if we head down after breakfast, we can all go in together?” Gideon kicked Harrow under the table to emphasise her words. “After all, we’ll achieve much more, much faster, if we work together.”

“Well,” Abigail said, “I’m certainly not averse to a spot of collaboration, and Isaac _has_ been nagging me to let him go down there since we found out about the facility. I’ll feel much better about things if there are a few of us there. Safety in numbers, and all that. What do you think, Palamedes?”

“Well, I did have plans to do some analysis of some of the artefacts around the hatch itself… but that can certainly wait for a couple of hours. I’d be delighted to accompany you all - after all, I’d be a fool to turn down the opportunity to collaborate with a mind like yours, Lady Pent. Your papers have always been most engaging.”

“Then it’s decided,” Gideon said, “We’ll all head down together after everyone has finished eating.” Though she kept her voice level, she nudged Harrow’s knee with hers again on the ‘everyone’, to make it abundantly clear that she had no intention of so much as flexing a single necromantic muscle until Harrow consumed something approaching a reasonable portion of food.

Gideon suppressed a smile as Harrow brought her heel down viciously hard on Gideon’s instep in response, before picking up her bread. She knew it was probably not exactly healthy to be so delighted by Harrow’s attempts to injure her, but the violence brought back memories of happier times, before Gideon had been named Reverend Daughter, when she'd been just Gideon Nav, unwanted foundling, and Harrow had still been the hope of her House - the closest to carefree that they’d ever been.


	20. Chapter 20

When they got to the hatch, Gideon insisted on going in first - despite not having encountered any danger in the facility the day before, (well, any necromantic danger, at least - she certainly hadn’t left _emotionally_ unscathed), she had not forgotten Teacher’s warning, and knew she’d feel responsible if anything bad happened to anyone now, given that she’d brought them there.

In the end, Gideon and Harrow went in first, followed by Magnus, the awful teens, then Abigail and finally Palamedes and Camilla. The Fourth weren’t happy about being bracketed by the Fifth, but kept their complaining to a very audible whisper when Abigail gently implied that this was the only way she was happy letting them come down at all.

Gideon found the interplay between the Fourth and Fifth Houses very interesting to watch; on the one hand, the idea that the heir to one House could have the authority to dictate the actions of their equal from another House lent credence to the Ninth’s perpetual terror that they’d become a subject of the Fifth if they ever asked for help.

On the other hand, there was something about the casual affection, the care, the way the older couple so clearly wanted the teens to be safe and happy, that gnawed at her. It hurt to look, but she couldn’t bear not to. How different would she have been if she’d known her parents? How different would Harrow have been if her parents had loved her? How different would Harrow and Gideon’s relationship be if either of them had ever really experienced love?

As it was, even after years of unavoidable contemplation, Gideon didn’t know how she really felt about Harrow. There was so much muddying the waters - Gideon was Harrow’s usurper, and liege, Harrow was Gideon’s cavalier, and probable (unwilling) future bride. Did she hate Harrow? She hated Harrow’s parents, and what she felt about Harrow had a similar intensity - but whereas she would have been happy never to see Pelleamena and Priamhark again, Gideon was never truly comfortable when Harrow was out of her sight. Was that love, then? Or just concern over an acolyte with a lack of self-preservation which bordered on death-wish?

The biggest mystery of all - why couldn’t she stop obsessing over these questions when the answers didn’t even matter? However unclear her feelings for Harrow, Harrow herself couldn’t have made her feelings for Gideon more clear. Harrow hated her, and everything Gideon did to try and change that only made Harrow hate her more. 

The decent down the ladder into the facility wasn’t that lengthy, all things considered, and yet Gideon had plenty of time to think herself into a perfectly miserable mood by the time they were all assembled at the bottom. She needed a moment alone, and not just to pull herself together - she remembered abruptly the note in her pocket. Plus, it would be good to get back into the foyer outside Lab One unseen, so that hopefully none of the others would suspect that the Ninth had deliberately blocked the door.

“Harrow,” Gideon said, proud of how she’d managed to keep her voice level. “You’ve got your map, right? Can you show everyone else around while I go see if I can get the door to Lab One open? I think I saw some loose wiring when we were in there - it’s probably an easy fix.”

“Or I could fix it.” Gideon heard the desperation in Harrow’s voice, though her tone was so flat, Gideon doubted anyone else would pick up on it. Well, getting stuck playing tour guide would serve Harrow right for disappearing yesterday - Gideon wasn’t about to let Harrow muck around in this facility on her own. It wasn’t safe for someone who wasn’t a necromancer to be alone down here. Besides, Gideon didn’t want to have to come up with a convincing lie for why she needed to be in Lab Three, with a replica clavicle - especially since even she didn’t know.

“You made the map - you’re the logical choice. I insist.” Before Harrow could say another word, Gideon left, making her way to Lab One and trusting Harrow’s engrained furtiveness to keep her from following and leading the others to see what she’d presumably done to block off the lab.

Sure enough, Gideon was alone as she entered the foyer to Lab One, though she could hear Harrow’s voice travelling down the corridor as she explained the facility’s layout. 

As she'd expected, Gideon found the apple in moments, tucked into the corner behind the archway, where the shadow concealed it from sight. As soon as she moved it away from the arch, the little red light by the door went out. Gideon slipped it into her pocket, and waited until Harrow was leading the other Houses down the corridor which lead to _PRESERVATION_ , before ducking into Lab Three. Lab Three had a foyer like the others, and Gideon took the apple back out of her pocket and tucked the incriminating fruit into one of the lockers, before pushing through the door into the laboratory proper. The sign outside this lab said _SUBSUMATION._ This lab was almost as bare as Lab One, containing only a table, a locked box, and a single molar. 

Gideon’s first instinct was reconstruction, but she wasn’t sure exactly how a skeleton construct would help her to open the locked box (unless the goal was to break it open, but she doubted that). Even if it was reconstruction - why this tooth? Gideon had a dozen more in her pockets, and two full sets of baby teeth hung around her throat; surely if all that was required was a skeleton, it would have been a BYO-Bone situation?

Upon cursory inspection, the tooth was nothing special - mandibular second, some signs of vitamin deficiency. Gideon fumbled the replica-clavicle from her pocket, aware that she didn’t have much time before the others returned to Lab One and found that she wasn’t there. 

She held it up next to the tooth, but couldn’t see what the two objects could have to do with each other. She was just about to give up and leave when she noticed the lockbox - its keyhole was large, and oddly shaped. Inspiration finally struck, and she inserted one end of the clavicle into the keyhole and turned. The lock clicked, and she lifted the lid. Inside was a thick grey key, with unpretentious teeth, the kind you’d lock a cabinet with. 

She pocketed the key, re-locked the box, and made her way swiftly and quietly back to Lab One. She made it just in time - as she was opening the door, she heard voices approaching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On hiatus for a little while, but I do intend to come back to this when I can


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I knuckled down and wrote the next big chunk of this during Nano, so I've got about another 25 chapters ready to go. I'm planning to update this next lot daily (which, coincidentally means there's quite a significant chapter due on Christmas Day, as a little treat for anyone who celebrates)
> 
> I've got a few other projects on during December, so there may be a little break after that, but I'm hoping to get this finished sooner rather than later, as I'm really excited for the ending.
> 
> Thanks for being patient with me!

The lab was cramped with all of them inside, but they fit, just about. Gideon briefly explained to the others what she'd managed to work out the day before; that the apple seemed to be within some kind of ward, possibly a banishment ward, and was entirely free of thanergy.

For a few minutes, the Fifth and Sixth houses chattered with excitement - understated on the part of the Sixth, and unabashed for the Fifth - on the possible implication and applications of such a concept, with only brief and occasional interjections from Gideon herself, or the Fourth necromancer, with whom she exchanged baffled looks when the older necromancers devolved utterly into rapid-fire technical terminology that Gideon wasn't wholly familiar with. This wasn't bone magic, and so her theoretical knowledge was sketchy at best.

Finally, they appeared to have arrived at something approximating a plan of action. Gideon watched as first Palamedes and then Abigail attempted to lift the apple from its platform, but with no more success than Gideon had managed the day before. Finally, she stepped in to make her own attempt, and Isaac did the same, with similar results.

“It's no good,” Palamedes said after they'd each tried several times and the air in the room was becoming heavy with the reek of decay, despite the vents circulating fresh air throughout the facility. "No matter how careful I am with the bounds, I can't get an exact barrier between my hands and the apple skin, and as we've found, even the slightest touch of thanergy creates a cascading effect too powerful for the ward to keep out.”

“What if you try extending the ward to encompass your hands, at least in part?” Gideon asked, and then immediately blushed under her paint, feeling foolish. She knew the answer, even before Palamedes answered; sometimes she wished that she'd ever bothered cultivating a habit of thinking before speaking.

“As necromancers,” he said, “metabolically, our systems cannot function without thanergy. Being inside this sort of ward for an extended period would not be healthy for anyone, adept or not, but for someone with necromantic aptitude, there is no way to safely remove and reintroduce thanergy to the system. Think of the problems experienced by necromancers in open space - it is survivable, but not the least bit pleasant, and that's with their own innate thanergy still present. Best case scenario, the body instinctively throws the ward off and it simply fails.”

“Of course,” Gideon said.

“But Gideon does raise an interesting point, don't you think?” Abigail asked Palamedes. “What if one of our cavaliers were the transport? They wouldn't experience the same harm from being partially within the ward, as their bodies aren't dependent on thanergy in the same way?”

“Ah, of course!” Palamedes exclaimed, sounding so excited that even Gideon found herself getting interested. “However, I don't know that it would help,” he continued, the brief flush of excitement completely gone, “the area of the ward is necessarily limited by the sheer amount of control and effort needed to maintain it. We’re lucky that they picked a moderately-sized object; I’m not sure it would be possible at all with something even so much larger as a melon. The scope is so limited, in fact, that the ease of not having to be quite so precise with the boundaries is largely offset by the difficulty of accounting for the movement when it isn't one's own hands - there isn’t much margin for error.”

“I think it could still be a viable approach,” Abigail countered, “if we use our own cavaliers. I don't know about you, but Magnus and I have been together for long enough that I reckon we've got a decent shot at doing this with enough synchronicity to make it work. What do you say, darling? Shall we give it a try?”

Magnus stepped forwards without hesitation. "What do I do?"

"Put your hands around the apple for now, but don't move it until I say, I need to get the ward in place to start with…”

Their first attempt went no better than when Abigail had tried it alone, but gradually, Magnus was able to lift the apple from the platform. The difficulty came when he had to shift his feet to start crossing to the other plinth. After the seventh apple disintegrated in Magnus' hands just as he shifted his weight to pick one foot up off the floor, Abigail cursed explosively.

"Now, love," Magnus said gently, nodding thanks at Camilla as she passed him the rag they were using to clean off their hands. "We can do this. Remember the night you proposed?"

Despite her prior frustration, Abigail looked up at him and smiled with dreamy nostalgia. "As if I could ever forget it!"

The teens groaned with subdued horror in the background, apparently unable to tolerate the sheer unalloyed intimacy in the look the Fifth exchanged.

"You remember the waltz? The way we moved together?"

"I do," Abigail's smile took on a wistful, nostalgic air. "I'd known for a long time that you were the person I'd marry, but - nerves, you know - and then when we danced that night, it was like we were already married. Every step, every turn, you were there with me, as close as breathing."

"So try that."

Abigail looked startled, but only for a moment, before she nodded. As Magnus put his hands back out to hold the apple, he started humming softly. The pitch was miles off - Magnus clearly couldn't have carried a tune in a bucket - but the rhythm was steady. This time, Abigail didn't watch his hands, or his feet; she kept her eyes on his, and Gideon saw her swaying every so slightly in time with the beat Magnus set.

They made it just over halfway, before the apple disintegrated. 

"Drat!" Abigail exclaimed, but it held nothing of the frustration her earlier curses had. 

"You always did forget that turn," Magnus smiled at her as he wiped his hands clean, and got ready to try again.

On their third try, they got it, and the top of the clear plinth hinged open. Magnus looked around the room, but seeing no objection on anyone’s face, he reached in and took out the small box inside, holding it out for Abigail to open

When she opened the box, inside was another key. 

"A key!" Palamedes said, excitedly. Abigail passed it around for each of them to examine, and Gideon noticed a familiar etching on the base of the key.

"Hey, Harrow? Pass me that map?" Harrow took out her book, and turned it to the appropriate page before handing it over. It took only a minute's searching to find what she was looking for. "Look! The symbols match. This key must open that door."

"Well, then our next step seems obvious," Palamedes said. "Lead the way, Ninth."

One by one they trailed out of the room, and up the ladder leading out of the facility. Since Harrow had been the one to actually map Canaan House, and therefore knew the way far better than she did, Gideon gestured for Harrow to take the lead, and received only the faintest of disapproving glares before Harrow moved to obey; she was clearly too eager to see what was behind the locked door they'd just earned the key for, to be too concerned about not adopting her proper place at Gideon's back. Frankly, after the fraught few days they'd had, Gideon felt safer all around with Harrow in sight. She trusted the other scions and cavaliers who accompanied them. Perhaps that was foolish, but Gideon hadn't survived eighteen years in Drearburh without getting a pretty good sense of when someone wanted to harm her, and she got no such impression from the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Houses. 

Like everything else in this beautiful corpse of a building, the route to the locked door which they anticipated would match this key made no sense whatsoever. From the hatch in the basement, it felt like they ascended about a dozen flights of stairs, some of which were unsettlingly located on the outside of various spires and turrets; a clear indication that whatever architect had originally designed the place was utterly fearless, and a bit of a dick.

It was one dizzying climb after another, the wind whipping Gideon’s robes around her in a way which probably looked very dramatic and imposing, but felt rather like she was about to do a terrible impression of a kite, and get swept off the precarious wrought-iron steps and meet a very final end on the terraces far below. But worse than the feeling of being an insect crawling up the side of dead body, was the fact that, once they’d reached a spot high up in one tower or another, there would invariably be just another staircase to descend. None of the corridors seemed to link up as they should; Harrow explained, with a note of something almost approaching apology, that Canaan House was in such poor repair, with so many collapsed floors, jammed doors, and other obstacles, that this circuitous route she’d plotted was the safest approach.

When they finally got there, the door itself was something of an anti-climax. It was made of wood, which would have excited Gideon a couple of days ago, since wood was rarer than Crux’s pity on the Ninth, but it seemed like you couldn’t take a single step on the First without stubbing your toes against some old wooden knick-knack or other, so the novelty had quickly dulled. Aside from the carving engraved into the lintel, which matched the design on the key, the door was fairly unornamented.

“Would you like to do the honours?” Magnus said to his wife, after they’d all been standing awkwardly in the hallway for a few minutes, trying to discern meaning in what was clearly just a door.

“Nonsense,” Abigail said, “it was your brilliant idea which won us the challenge; go ahead.”

They dimpled at each other in a sappy way that caused Gideon’s stomach to twist with something which might have been nausea, and almost certainly _wasn’t_ envy; she assured herself of that. Just as she was starting to worry that she was going to have to deal with the gastrointestinal implications of seeing the older couple kiss, Magnus turned his attention from his adept to the door in front of him, and pulled the key out of his pocket.

“Well,” he said, generally, “here we go!”


	22. Chapter 22

The room behind the door was almost entirely unlike every other room in Canaan House. For one thing, it was as perfectly preserved as the apple had been. For another, where most of Canaan House, aside from the basement facility, was open and airy, all white stone walls slick with moss, and cracked marble flooring, this room's décor belied its open layout, giving it more of a cave-like feeling than anything else. 

Despite this, it had none of the stark, chilly darkness of Drearburh. Instead, the whole room seemed to be panelled in a dark-toned, sumptuous wood, oiled to a gentle sheen. The floor was carpeted in a pile so deep that half Gideon's booted foot disappeared into it, which muffled every sound in the room until Gideon felt like she had cotton stuffed into her ears. Perhaps the hush would have been luxurious and restful to someone with a less paranoid nature - Gideon was only constantly and unbearably aware of how easy it would be to sneak up soundlessly on someone in one of the lush leather reading chairs, which weren't even sensibly situated in the corners, but sat boldly in the middle of the room; so reckless as to not even face the door.

Whoever had decorated and furnished this room either had a death wish, or spent time only in the company of those they trusted. Gideon, however, had instinctively backed herself into one of the corners nearest the door as soon as she entered the room. Footstep-silencing carpet or not, no one was going to sneak up on _her_ . Harrow hovered at her side, looking out of sorts at not being able to stand behind Gideon as she ought, but - _Harrow could just fucking suck it up for once -_ Gideon thought. She sacrificed enough of her time, effort, and patience on Harrow's comfort, and for precious little result. 

The moment the thought crossed her mind, Gideon chided herself. Her comfort was unimportant, when set against her duty to Harrow. Maybe her duty to the rest of the Ninth was something she could honestly say that she'd never asked for, but Harrow had been in her heart, one way or another, since the day she'd been born. With a sigh, Gideon pushed off the wall and made her way further in the room, exploring with the others, and she could practically hear the rigid set of Harrow's shoulders relax, just a little, as she was able to fall back into place. 

It still hurt, more than a little, that the only way Harrow could display any kind of ease in Gideon's presence was when fully contained within the bounds of tradition and protocol, when she could disassociate from herself, and divorce Gideon from the role she occupied. The only way that Harrow could tolerate Gideon was when Harrow was not Harrow, but the cavalier primary of the Ninth, and Gideon was not Gideon, but the Reverend Daughter. 

Despite its cave-like ambience, the room was spacious. As Gideon followed one of the walls she found a small alcove, with a flat surface set at chest height. Inside the alcove was just enough space for a single person to stand, and all around that tiny space the walls were lined with shelves of bottles, glasses, bizarre, long-handled spoons and other strange, possibly alchemical knick-knacks. Intrigued, Gideon stepped into the nook and pulled a bottle at random off the shelf, uncorking it and giving it a cautious sniff, before gagging at a strong, acrid scent that Gideon had never smelled before, but reminded her faintly of the pickling liquid used to preserve snow-leeks. She quickly corked it again, and investigated no other bottles. 

"Hey! Look at this," called Isaac from further into the room. Trust the awful teens to have run ahead without the slightest trace of caution, thought Gideon, conveniently ignoring the way she'd merrily sniffed a bottle of what could well have been something incredibly toxic. Gideon didn't run, but she increased her pace, arriving at the back of the room only a few paces behind the long-legged Palamedes, and slightly ahead of Abigail and Magnus. Camilla had somehow managed to keep up with her lanky necromancer without seeming to rush in the slightest; she was always just calm, collected, and at her adept's side, as if by magic. Gideon wasn't sure whether she wanted to marry Camilla or be her, but she was unabashedly in awe of the taciturn, unflappable cavalier.

What Isaac had found turned out to be a stone tablet, engraved with what looked like a very complex necromantic theorem, on a utilitarian workbench which looked out of place in this sumptuous room. The area immediately around the bench was tiled, rather than carpeted, and a few singed patches on the border where carpet met tile indicated the reason. Gideon took a moment to look over the inscribed notation, realising quickly that this was a recreation of the theorem used to set up the apple challenge in the facility below. She saw both Palamedes and Abigail reach into their robes and pull out notebooks and pens, and realised she hadn't brought anything to write on herself; the notebook she’d taken to the library with her the other day was back in her trunk in the Ninth’s rooms. Isaac was already scribbling in a notebook of his own.

She turned to ask Harrow if she could borrow her notebook, but before she could open her mouth, she saw that Harrow was already holding it out. Gideon grinned in thanks, which only made Harrow scowl deeper. She didn't need to say a word for Gideon to be able interpret the reason for her scowl; Harrow was displeased that, of course, hers was the necromancer who failed to arrive adequately prepared. Harrow's assistance apparently didn't extend to the loan of her pen, however; Gideon was forced to improvise, forming a nub of bone into something resembling a pen, and then - with a carefully blank face; she had some pride after all - slipping the point between her lips and stabbing the delicate flesh inside her cheek, until she had a drop of blood that she could fashion into a makeshift necromantic ink. She hated having to write in her own blood, but was familiar enough with the process to have long since overcome any squeamishness. Ink was yet another expensive luxury the Ninth couldn't justify wasting resources on.

For a few minutes, the room was silent except for the scratching of pens. Gideon was too busy making sure that her transcription was accurate to fully comprehend the theorem itself, but two things already stood out to her. Firstly, though it was clearly a work of necromantic genius - closer to art than science - the theorem was basically pointless; it required such an obscene amount of thanergy that, without the equivalent of a infant-murder on hand every ten to fifteen minutes, the spell would be impossible to execute. The second thing she noticed was that the process which had been used to provide the initial preservation was very different to the one they'd used to complete the challenge. This theorem dealt with preservation on a more basic, fundamental level. 

Gideon knew that it would take her time, and possibly a lot of research to fully understand what she was looking at - she simply lacked the familiarity or expertise with spirit magic to be able to entirely follow the theorem, but if she had to hazard a guess, preserving food was not the goal here - useful as that would be. What the adept who had designed this had been attempting was preservation of the spirit itself; holding a spirit, fully intact and with all memory and intellect in place after the point of death. Not a revenant - a soul captured this way would function fully as it had during life, without any degradation or reliance on a thanergetic link. 

Gideon thought of Bob and the other skeletons, and felt a chill; there was nothing in this theorem which would allow a spirit to be fixed to a skeletal construct, as he had been, but it was impossible to look at another necromancer's process and not get an inkling of how their mind worked, and what made them tick. Gideon had the distinct suspicion that the mind behind the work here was terribly concerned with the mechanics of necromancy, with little appreciation for the people these spirits represented, which had unpleasant implications for what the rest of the work conducted here might involve.

There was a reason that Gideon had barely any knowledge of spirit magic - a reason beyond the fact that, as a Ninth necromancer she'd been actively discouraged from studying anything other than bone magic (that hadn't stopped her study of animaphilia, after all). The bones she manipulated came from people, sure, but they weren't people themselves. Even her forays into flesh magic were used purely on her own body. There was something about the thought of mucking around with another person's spirit that made her deeply uncomfortable.

Still, she copied down the theorem anyway, and filed away for later reflection her growing conviction that the skeletons of Canaan House had not remained here for a myriad of performing pointless menial tasks through choice. She wondered how she’d fare after a hundred centuries of dealing with responsibility she had never asked for and was criminally ill-suited to, instead of just the decade she’d had since becoming Reverend Daughter, and the atavistic terror she felt at the thought only reinforced her decision that she would never become a lyctor.

These were dark thoughts, and were rather more than Gideon really felt like dealing with on a day which had started with insufficient sleep and a cracked rib. When she’d finished copying down the theorem, and the others had as well, Gideon decided she had reached the limit of her tolerance for dark cavernous spaces hung heavy with the echoes of past necromantic atrocities. If that’s what she’d wanted, she’d have stayed in Drearburh.

“Anyone fancy lunch?” She said.


	23. Chapter 23

Lunch passed mostly in amiable silence. Although there was some intermittent talk about the challenge, and the room they’d visited, everyone seemed occupied by their own thoughts, and the simple, familiar routine of the meal. As they were sitting around, each having finished eating, but no one quite ready to make the call to get back to work, Coronabeth Tridentarius entered the room, and walked over to their table with a broad smile.

"Well, it'll certainly save me some time, finding you all here together! I've been trying to arrange some duels for the cavaliers, if any of you would like to join me?" She twinkled, appealingly, in a way that Gideon realised that she wasn't entirely sure she was capable of saying no to. Then, in a conspiratorial tone, Coronabeth continued, "Babs gets _so_ irritating when he's bored. It would really be a great favour to me."

Looks were exchanged around the table, varying from desperately enthusiastic - Jeannemary - to amused tolerance - Magnus - all the way through Camilla's indifference to Harrow's conflicted glare in Gideon's direction. 

Gideon knew that Harrow must be desperate to spar with a real cav, after years of only ever training with Aiglamene (and occasionally cornering Ortus into a bout, when he couldn't get away fast enough, and she was feeling particularly vicious; though Gideon wasn't sure that the ten seconds it usually took Harrow to defeat him really constituted a duel), but Gideon also knew that Harrow was incapable of prioritising, or even considering, her own desires, and even if she had been inclined to ever actually ask for what she wanted, there's no way she'd do it now, when she was so hell-bent on Gideon spending every waking moment on the challenges down in the facility.

"Well," Gideon spoke up, "I certainly wouldn't mind a bit of a break, and we've made great progress already today, thanks to the Fifth, so why not?"

There was a general murmur of agreement, and the assembled adepts and necromancers got to their feet, following Coronabeth, who led them down to the training room Gideon had found before - albeit the floor had now been polished to a mirror-shine, and the room smelled of fresh chemicals rather than age and neglect. Naberius was already there, working through an exercise with the cavalier of the Second House, whose name Gideon hadn't yet caught. 

Naberius was facing the door, so he noticed the influx of people before the Second cav did, and Gideon could see the change as he caught sight of them; he was visibly preening now, showing off like the pompous ass he was. Gideon had suspected from the moment she first caught a whiff of his pomade that she wouldn't like him, and this only cemented her assessment of him as all style, and so little substance that it could only be measured in negative figures - she was certain that his presence actively leeched substance from the surrounding area, like a walking void of pointlessness. 

Perhaps it was a little cruel to think of him in such terms; she could see that he was certainly a very skilled cavalier, but the Ninth had no time for his kind of strutting and posturing, and on this front, if few others, she found she agreed.

Jeannemary was bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet with anticipation, which Gideon had to give her credit for. Aside from Harrow, who had grown up on sparse Ninth House rations and so her growing up had included very little in the way of actual 'growing', the other cavaliers present were all about twice Jeannemary's size, and around a decade her senior, or more, and yet she was absolutely spoiling for a fight. Gideon wondered if there was a way to suggest that she duel Harrow, without Harrow deciding that Gideon was insulting her skill by setting up a match with the younger cavalier. 

With Harrow so close at hand, that meticulous step behind and to the side of her, Gideon couldn’t even ask one of the other necromancers to suggest the duel. Nor, she now realised, would she be able to go and investigate the laboratory she’d gained the key to without having to explain to Harrow exactly where and how she’d obtained said key, since she'd insisted that they stick together from now on.

"Marta," Coronabeth called out, "behold my coup!"

Naberius visibly scoffed at the notion that Coronabeth's accompanying gaggle of cavaliers and adepts constituted a 'coup'. Gideon saw him take in each cavalier in turn, and dismiss them almost instantly; even Camilla, which told Gideon all she needed to know of Tern's brain. He might be good with a sword - he certainly acted like he was the Emperor's gift to fencing - but to overlook someone with Camilla's predatory grace, just because she was from the Sixth, or perhaps because she carried her cards very close to her grey-clad chest, was the act of a fool. 

"Jeannemary the Fourth," Coronabeth continued, clearly having clocked the Fourth cavalier's excitement, "why don't you step up first; give all the older folks a little longer to warm up. Ah, but who should your opponent be...?" Coronabeth looked from face to face, assessing.

"Not me," Naberius said, instantly, "I didn't come here to teach _children_. If I'd wanted to do that, I'd have stayed home and gotten married."

"As if anyone was _offering_ ," Coronabeth hissed, whipping her head around to face him. Jeannemary visibly wilted at Naberius' scorn, and Gideon found herself noticing, not for the first time, how incredibly punchable his face was. 

"Perhaps Sir Magnus?" Corona continued, quickly, seeming distinctly concerned - though Gideon wasn't sure whether that was because her cavalier was being an incredible butthole, or because already Marta the Second appeared to be losing interest, and the Sixth showed signs of considering whether they could quietly slip out without being noticed.

"Always happy to oblige, Princess," Magnus said. His voice was as affable as ever, but Gideon couldn't help noticing the furious look Abigail shot Naberius, from behind Magnus' back where Jeannemary couldn't see her, and made a mental note never to cross Abigail Pent if she could help it. Magnus continued "but I'm afraid it won't be much of a show; Jeannemary Chatur is a formidable opponent. I think the last time I managed to beat her in a duel she was five..."

" _Magnus, do not talk about me being five_ ," the Fourth wailed, in a terrible approximation of sotto voce, which still managed to be better than her previous attempts at whispering. Perhaps she was learning. 

"Now, let me tell you this story-" Magnus continued, undeterred by Jeannemary's protestations of _noo Magnus, do not tell anyone this story!_

"Challenged me to a duel during a reception; said I'd insulted her - think it was a matter of propping her up with cushions, and to be honest, she would have had me even then, if she hadn't been using a bread knife as her offhand-"

Disgusted beyond all tolerance, the much-tried Jeannemary let out a primal yell, and escaped to the benches on the other side of the room, far away from them. Isaac rushed to follow, and sat beside her, putting a comforting arm around her shoulder which she shrugged off with irritation. Now that she wasn't looking, Magnus joined his wife in shooting Naberius a look of frank reproof. The third's cavalier coloured and looked away. 

"I want to see a match," said Princess Corona. "Come - Harrowhark, the Ninth, right?" 

_Well, fuck, shit, and bollocks_. Gideon had been too busy flirting with Coronabeth the only time they'd exchanged words for Gideon to bring her up to speed on the issue of Harrow's full title. Gideon could only hope that Harrow didn't take her feelings out too brutally on whoever Coronabeth appointed to spar with her. "Why don't you try Sir Magnus instead? Don't believe him when he says he's rubbish. The Fifth House is meant to turn out very fine cavaliers."

Magnus inclined his head.

"Of course I'm willing, and the princess is gracious," he said, "but I didn't get to be cavalier primary due to any particular martial prowess, so don't expect too much from me." He shrugged off his jacket, draping it over one of the benches at the side of the room, before stepping into the open space in the centre and assuming a ready position. 

“I’ll arbitrate,” Corona said.

Gideon nodded when Harrow looked at her. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Harrow would follow protocol and ask permission before engaging in a duel, but between the relative lack of formality most of the other Houses seemed to have around such things, and Harrow’s general preference for pretending that Gideon didn’t exist at all, she was still somewhat taken aback. What surprised her even further was the fact that Harrow stepped forward to face Magnus, unsheathing her rapier in one smooth movement before unhitching Samael’s chain from her waist, all without removing her robes. _She was going to fight in her robes?_

Magnus was apparently struggling with the concept as much as Gideon was. “Does the Ninth, er-” Magnus was gesturing in a rather general way to Harrow’s robes, her veil, her hood, which Gideon expertly translated to mean _Are you going to take those off?_

Harrow simply shook her head, _no_ , and laid her offhand arm across her chest, showing the black chain that was her main-gauche, and looking expectantly over to Coronabeth.

“All right!” Magnus shrugged in wonder, and added the slightly bewildering, “Well done.” Before mirroring Harrow; his own offhand weapon was a beautiful dagger of ivory-coloured steel, the handle a twist of creamy leather which Gideon would have sworn was - thrillingly - not even human leather. Gideon understood that such things weren’t exactly an issue for cavaliers, but as a necromancer herself, she’d taken great pains when choosing her own sword to find one which hadn’t included any distractingly-thanergetic human remains in its construction.

“To the first touch,” said the arbiter, badly hiding her rising excitement. “Clavicle to sacrum, arms exception. Call.”

Gideon found herself honestly looking forward to watching Harrow fight. She was fairly certain that Harrow was good; Aiglamene always spoke highly of her, but with only Ortus for comparison, Gideon felt that you could have stuck a rapier hilt-first into a cushion and Aiglamene would have ranked the cushion as more skilful a cavalier than Ortus. She hoped that the ‘to the first touch’ wouldn’t prove to be an issue; if Aiglamene’s methods with Harrow’s training were anything like the ones she used with Gideon, Harrow would be far more accustomed to fighting _to the floor._

Harrow had her back to Gideon, so Gideon had a perfect view of Magnus smiling at her cavalier with all the boyish, teacherly enthusiasm of a man about to play a ball game with a younger sibling. The only indication that he was facing the forbidding, black-clad figure of the Ninth cavalier, and not Jeannemary was the slight note of doubt about his eyes, a tugging in his mouth that Gideon recognised instantly; he was a little afraid of Harrow. A quick glance at his necromancer showed that Abigail displayed a similar disquiet, though she hid it better.

“Magnus the Fifth!” the older cavalier called, and: “Er- go easy!”

“Harrowhark the Ninth.” Responded Harrow, in a tone which, being pulled one way with the anticipatory thrill of the fight, and the other way with the ever-present sourness that accompanied her full title, landed squarely on ‘neutral’.

“Seven paces back,” Corona said, “turn - begin…”

It happened so fast that if Gideon had not been staring in unblinking fascination, she might have missed it. Harrow deftly countered Magnus’s first feint as if they’d practiced and choreographed the move together. She advanced a step, and then lashed out with her chain, until it wrapped around Magnus’ off-hand, the carved butterfly of lead-filled pelvis dangling from his wrist like a charm on a bracelet, and the coils of metal had wound themselves tight enough - or maybe just startled Magnus enough - that his dagger clattered to the floor. Harrow yanked, which shouldn’t have worked, with her far smaller weight, but Magnus was off-balance and not expecting it; he lurched forwards, saving himself from falling with a slightly clumsy double step which brought him in range of Harrow’s rapier. She touched the tip, very gently, to the base of her opponent’s neck.

And just like that, the duel was over.


	24. Chapter 24

“Match to the Ninth!” Coronabeth called, sounding breathless with excitement.

With exquisite etiquette, Harrow sheathed her rapier, fixed Samael’s chain back to her belt, and bowed to her defeated opponent. The room let out a collective breath, all except for Magnus, still frozen, with his good-natured but poleaxed expression, like a man caught mid-practical joke. A beat too late, he returned Harrow’s bow, and crossed the room to retrieve his lost dagger.

Jeannemary said: “Oh my _days_ ,” and the cohort cav of the Second stood up at least two inches taller than before, eyeing Harrow with interest. _Good luck with that,_ Gideon thought. If Harrow had been at all inclined towards a life in the cohort, or, really, anywhere but the Ninth, then Gideon would not have stopped her from leaving. If there had been anything it was within Gideon’s power to give, anything which could have brought Harrow some measure of peace or contentment with her life, then she’d have had it long ago, no matter the personal cost to Gideon.

With his off-hand recovered and tucked back in his belt, Magnus drifted off to the side, accepting a commiseratory embrace from his wife, and saying, a bit plaintively, “I’m not quite _that_ out of form, am I?”

And, from the terrible teens, “ _Magnus! Maaaaagnus. Three moves, Magnus._ ”

“Am I getting old?” He asked of Abigail. “Should you divorce me?” Abigail silenced this line of thought with a peck on his lips that was just a tad too lingering to be called chaste. Gideon expected a teen chorus of dismay at this, but the Fourth’s attention was still fixed on Harrow. Jeannemary especially appeared awestricken; her mouth hung ever-so-slightly open and her eyes were wide and bright. 

Almost under her breath, and to no one in particular, Coronabeth was muttering, “I didn’t even see her move. _God,_ she’s fast.” There was a certain interested, almost acquisitive, gleam in her eye that made Gideon bristle.

Harrow, meanwhile, still stood alone in the centre of the room. Gideon suspected that there was a part of her waiting for Aiglamene’s voice to chime in and point out a half dozen errors she’d made. If Harrow was expecting Gideon to take on Aiglamene’s duty there, then she’d be waiting a while. Gideon’s expertise was not the rapier, so if there had been any flaw in Harrow’s performance, she couldn’t identify it. In fact, Gideon found herself momentarily paralysed by a warmth in her chest that might have been admiration or even pride in her cavalier, or even something more… but _more_ was something she refused to torture herself by contemplating.

Before Gideon compose herself enough to go and shepherd Harrow out of the way, to allow some other cavaliers to take a turn, the obnoxious Third cavalier wafted out on to the floor in a haze of hair gel and lip balm. 

“Next match to me,” Said Naberius.

“Don’t be greedy,” said his princess, good-naturedly and a trifle distractedly, still looking at Harrow with that proprietary, speculative air which made Gideon want to challenge her on the spot… if doing so wouldn’t have both given the Third’s oily cavalier exactly what he wanted, and also meant vocalising, not just to Coronabeth, but to Harrow, and to herself, exactly what it was about the princess’ behaviour that Gideon was having such a problem with. So Gideon kept her mouth shut as Corona continued: “The Ninth just fought. Why don’t you go toe-to-toe with Jeannemary?”

“I want a _match_ , not a babysitting job,” Naberius said, derisively. The room got very quiet, and very tense, but the Third cavalier appeared completely oblivious to the effect his words were having. Addressing Harrow now, he said “you didn’t even break a sweat, did you?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “No, you’re ready to go again. Try _me_.”

A quick survey of the faces in the room showed that a fair proportion of the room was, in fact, ready to _try him_ , but that he might not enjoy the experience. The Sixth had, in fact, slipped out while everyone else was otherwise occupied - Gideon kicked herself for not having noticed this. She’d already known that Camilla could probably outright murder her without Gideon even noticing, but that Palamedes could move that gangly, stretched frame of his with such stealth was… interesting. 

This second slight from Naberius was apparently enough to nudge Jeannemary over the line between shame and fury, and Gideon suspected it was only her necromancer’s hand on her sword-arm that kept her from leaping from the bench and demanding satisfaction. Not that Isaac himself looked any happier - just more prudent than anyone from the Fourth really had any right to be, if Gideon’s comics were to be believed. But the real threat to Naberius’ health, wellbeing, and hairstyle, was clearly the Fifth; if looks could eviscerate then Abigail would have had blood on her hands, and even Magnus’ good humour appeared to be fraying dangerously. 

“Harrow?” Gideon asked. She wasn’t going to insult Harrow by pulling her out, when she clearly had another fight in her, but Naberius had turned a round of friendly practice matches into something distinctly less congenial, and Gideon was going to let Harrow decide for herself how involved in this she wanted to be. After all, if Harrow wasn’t up for for it, there was nothing to stop Gideon offering to show Naberius his own teeth. 

Jeannemary was an awful teen, but nothing Gideon had seen had given her any reason to think that the Fourth cavalier was anything but competent and dedicated (honestly, the Fourth had maybe been growing on her a bit, though she’d never admit it), whereas ‘Babs’ clearly laid his sword at the altar of vanity, not duty, and - from what she’d seen - forgot that the less attractive of his twin necromancers even existed most of the time, (though, Gideon at least could forgive him this last. She’d only met Ianthe Tridentarius once, and Gideon would quite happily have forgotten their encounter).

“Death first to vultures and scavengers.” Was Harrow’s only response, in her most chilling and sepulchral of tones. Gideon might have been more impressed had she not heard the exact same phrase from Crux every time he caught her sneaking a midnight snack in the Drearburh kitchens.

“So… is that a ‘yes’, or what?” The Third cavalier pressed, and Gideon did have to admire the way he was absolutely committed to his path of having exactly zero self-preservation instinct; he still showed no signs of having picked up on the mood of the room as it rapidly cooled towards him. In fact, the ambience was now so frosty that Gideon was surprised not to see clouds bloom from her lips each time she breathed out.

“Yes,” Gideon said. 

Coronabeth, at least, was more astute than her cavalier. There was a trace of trace of concern on her face, and her tone was placatory as she said, “Well, then… here we go.” She raised a hand, clearly about to start calling terms.

“Wait,” the cohort cavalier interrupted, saying: “Your highness. The adept shouldn’t officiate for their cavalier.”

“Oh, pff! Surely just this once can’t harm, Lieutenant.”

“I’ll arbitrate,” Abigail interjected, but she didn’t look at either Dyas or Coronabeth; she was looking squarely at Gideon, and Gideon could see the battle-lines being drawn in those eyes. Was the Ninth ally to the Fifth, or was Gideon happy to stand by and let Naberius’ repeated insults to the Fourth go unanswered?

The old caution flooded back to her; she recalled the lectures she received every time she suggested contacting the other Houses for aid, rather than cutting rations once again when one of the snow leek crops failed. Pelleamena’s acerbic retort, tongue cutting like a whip, _we are not becoming an appendix of the Third or Fifth Houses!_

Well, here was Gideon now, caught between the Third and Fifth Houses, and it wasn’t a difficult choice to make. Gideon nodded to Abigail, who inclined her head once, sharply in acknowledgement.

“You can’t call yourself a disinterested arbitrator,” Coronabeth protested.

“And why is that, Princess?” Abigail asked, and her feigned innocence carried a dangerous undertone. “Surely the Fifth are perfectly fit to arbitrate a duel between the Third and Ninth Houses; more so than you are.”

Coronabeth’s dilemma was writ plain over her face. To voice her concerns, she would have to acknowledge the insult her House had given the Fourth, and open herself up to Isaac challenging her personally for satisfaction on behalf of his cavalier. Isaac was the younger necromancer, but the Third House’s character was more inclined towards a silent knife in the back than a fair fight, and Coronabeth clearly didn’t fancy her chances in a duel against the Fourth heir. Not only that, but to suggest that the Fifth might be biased on the Fourth’s behalf risked opening a political can of worms that wouldn’t end well for anyone. 

When Coronabeth failed to answer, Abigail nodded her satisfaction and called out, “Hyoid down, disarm legal, necromancer’s mercy.” There was a collective intake of breath; those were not common terms for a friendly practice bout, but the only person in the room who appeared to still be operating under the assumption that there was anything friendly about the upcoming duel appeared to be Tern. “Do you agree to the terms?”

Coronabeth looked like she might honestly be about to burst into tears - for tactical reasons, if nothing else - but one look at Abigail’s face made it clear that such theatrics would do her no good. Gideon honestly felt sorry for Corona, who had seemed as genuinely excited as Jeannemary when she’d invited the cavaliers to all train together, and whose afternoon of idle entertainment had proceeded to become an unmitigated clusterfuck. Plus, she was stuck with a truly odious little creep for a cavalier.

“Do you agree to the terms, princess?” Abigail pressed, unmoved by Corona’s very fetching sorrow.

Coronabeth shot a stricken look towards her cavalier, who, at _‘necromancer’s mercy_ ’ finally seemed to be getting an inkling that there was something going on. But backing down from a challenge did not appear to be amongst his skillset. With a paper-thin veneer of confidence, he nodded to his necromancer, who in turn nodded to Abigail.

“Reverend Daughter?” It came as something of a shock to hear Abigail refer to her that way, but Gideon understood that the Fifth were already pushing their luck in pretending to be objective in this match; it wouldn’t do to refer to Gideon by name after using Coronabeth’s title. 

“I agree to the terms,” said Gideon, hoping that her faith in Harrow’s abilities wasn’t unfounded. For all that Gideon had been on the receiving end of more than her fair share of Harrow Nova viciousness, she’d only actually seen Harrow duel with her rapier a handful of times. If Harrow didn’t come out on top, then Gideon was going to have an absolute bear of a time crying mercy early enough to save her cavalier’s hide, but late enough to preserve her pride.

After the first minute or so, Gideon began to sweat. Despite Naberius being half-a-head taller than Harrow, and twice as broad in the shoulders, Harrow was mostly holding her own, and neither had yet scored a hit, but Harrow was gradually losing ground, and - to Gideon’s untrained eye - seemed to be almost constantly on the defensive. 

Then, in a move too quick for Gideon to catch, the Third caught the length of Harrow’s rapier in his wicked trident knife, and with a twist-and-flick motion, Harrow’s rapier was torn from her grasp. Gideon opened her mouth, a queasy terror churning like bile in her stomach; she wanted to end the match there, but she suppressed the urge, and clenched her jaw. Harrow would never forgive her if she called a stop without a single blow being landed. 

As well that Gideon didn’t intervene; Naberius was clearly accustomed to his duels ending at the disarm, or at first touch - Gideon supposed that anything more stood too great a chance of discomposing his elaborately coiffed hair, which she suspected he styled specifically to try and conceal how short he was in comparison to his necromancers. Because he was used to a disarm ending the match, he paused, just momentarily, as the black Ninth rapier clattered to the ground. 

That pause was all it took; Harrow gripped Samael’s chain in both hands and advanced with astonishing speed, stepping inside Naberius’ reach. This close, he couldn’t easily bring his rapier to bear. Gideon saw him realise this, saw him raise his off-hand instead, but the moment he did, Harrow lashed out with the free end of her chain, the lead-weighted pelvis striking his off-wrist with an audible crack which made almost everyone in the room wince; you didn’t have to be a bone adept to recognise the characteristic snap of a broken bone. 

To his credit, the Third did not drop his trident knife, but holding on to it appeared to be all he could manage. Harrow left an opening, only for a moment, but Gideon was certain her heart skipped a beat in that fraction of a second where Harrow’s left side was wholly unguarded, while she stepped back and reset her stance, but Naberius was too occupied, either with pain or with shock, to take advantage. 

That step back was a risk, and Gideon prayed that Harrow had calculated it carefully; though the larger cavalier’s bulk and height made him more of a threat if Harrow remained close enough for him to get a hold on her, staying out of his reach put her back in range of his rapier, and her with no blade of her own. 

Instead, she swung the weighted end of the chain until it formed a blur of motion before her. This caused something of a stalemate; Naberius would have to time any sort of attack with unbelievable precision not to foul his blade on the chain, but Harrow was stuck on the defensive; any attack she made would have to be swift and devastating, for she would have to drop her guard to do it. 

The stand-off continued for what felt like hours, but was probably less than a minute. Gideon suspected that Harrow was hoping to bait Naberius into gambling on an unwise thrust, in the hopes of ending the match quickly, as it was clear that Coronabeth had either forgotten that it was up to her to call mercy - not impossible - or she didn’t regard a broken bone as reason enough to stop the fight.

Sweat had broken out on Tern’s forehead, until it was as egregiously slick as his jellied hair and greased lips; the Third cavalier was becoming homogeneously moist in a way which made Gideon regret the seconds she’d had of lunch. 

Without warning, Harrow shifted the plane of her chain’s whirling, so that it swung by her side, not in front of her. It was only a moment, not long enough for pale, sweating Naberius to react; one rotation, two, speed building, until she whipped it abruptly forward on the upswing, shattering the other cavalier’s patella with a sickening crunch. He fell to his knees with a strangled scream, hung there just long enough for Gideon to shudder at the juxtaposition of the healthy right knee with the pulpy, caved-in left, and then kept falling until he lay prone at Harrow’s feet. 

No sooner had he hit the ground in squirming, agonised, distress than Harrow was on him, her knees pinning his arms, her chain wrapped around his throat, standing out starkly black against the pallid milk of his skin.


	25. Chapter 25

The silence stretched out, broken only by the fallen cavalier’s harsh, half-whimpering breaths. If Harrow was even the slightest bit out of breath, it was inaudible; with her head down she was completely obscured by her hood and robes, an implacable, unmoving swathe of black. Even her hands were concealed inside her black gloves. Gideon could only stare with a kind of morbid, unwilling fascination at the perfect sheen of Tern’s hair which, even in extremis, still did not fight its gelatinous bonds. Not a strand was out of place, and this seemed both profoundly sad, and unutterably hilarious; Gideon’s mind did not want to dwell on the brutal efficiency with which Harrow had dismantled her opponent, and sought refuge in hysterics, but she forced her breathing to remain steady and even. This was no time for her to lose her shit, however tempting, or justified, the loss of that shit might be.

And still the silence stretched on. Gideon tore her gaze from Tern’s obscenely perfect hair to stare at his necromancer; what the hell was Coronabeth thinking? The fight was clearly over - why didn’t she call it?

The answer appeared to be that she was on the verge of passing out, herself. Her face had drained of blood until it held a pallor reminiscent of her sister’s, and her hands were visibly shaking. There was no way that a necromancer so sensitive could possibly survive to adulthood, but perhaps it was the fact that it was _her_ cavalier who was injured, which was causing her such distress.

Seemingly utterly unaware of the fact that every person in that room was now staring at her, with the sole exception of Harrow, who - despite her obvious victory - did not seem inclined to take her attention from her opponent until the match had officially been called (Aiglamene would not have it any other way), Coronabeth stood, and stared, and shook, and did not speak.

It was Marta, in the end, who recovered herself enough to break the silence. "Princess," she hissed, tone admonitory. Then, when that got no response, she snapped _"Tridentarius."_ in a tone which would have had the most intransigent of cohort recruits scrambling to obedience. 

Still, Coronabeth did not respond; not only that, but she now seemed to be swaying on her feet. Gideon found herself wondering what the protocol was for ending a match 'to the necromancer's mercy', if said necromancer fainted before she could call it. Was there even a protocol for that? Necromancers were known for fainting, but usually from exertion, or hypovolemia, in the case of those adepts who were particularly inclined towards copious blood-sweats. Coronabeth was sweating, but it was garden-variety sweat, not the necromantic kind, and unless she'd been bored enough by the duel that she'd attempted to sprout herself an additional internal organ to keep herself occupied, it wasn't necromantic exertion either. 

Even as these thoughts were crossing Gideon's mind, it never occurred to her that Coronabeth actually _would_ faint; thankfully the Fifth were both closer, and apparently more perceptive; they caught her as she toppled, easing her gently to the floor.

"Princess Coronabeth is... indisposed," Abigail called out, voice filling the room with authority, "as arbitrator, I'm calling it. Match to the Ninth."

Marta looked, for a moment, like she wanted to object to this; perhaps there genuinely _wasn't_ a protocol for this situation, but she clearly thought better of it and kept her mouth shut. Gideon stepped forward, holding out a hand to help Harrow to her feet. Harrow didn't need the help, and Gideon knew it, and didn't know what insane whim had prompted her to offer Harrow her dignity on a platter; for Harrow, publicly scorning her necromancer would have the icing on the cake of two successful bouts in quick succession. _Why Harrow might even have cracked a smile,_ Gideon thought, dumbly. But Harrow took her hand, rising gracefully to her feet. 

"You were..." Gideon said, and trailed off. Even if she'd been able to put her pride and admiration into words, she wouldn't have dared break this fragile moment of truce between them by voicing those words.

"I know," Harrow said. Did her fingers linger just a moment before she let go of Gideon's hand? Had she risen to her feet just a hair closer to her necromancer than protocol would dictate? Paint, unmarred by even the slightest prickle of sweat, obscured her expression, but her pupils were huge, lightless voids ringed by only the thinnest circle of irises so dark that, without her pupils for comparison, they would have seemed black themselves. Before Gideon could try to decipher the look in those eyes, they were gone, and Harrow with them, as she went to retrieve her rapier.

If this had been a comic, then Gideon would have said without hesitation that what she'd just experienced was clearly the crackling energy of unbridled sexual tension. But this was real life, not a comic, and the idea of Harrow considering Gideon to be far enough advanced along the spectrum of ‘pond slime’ to ‘legitimate human’ for her to actually be a reasonable prospect for attraction was laughable. No. If that had been any sort of lust she'd detected in Harrow's face, then it was lingering blood-lust from the fight, directed at the one person above all others that Harrow most wanted to destroy.

Gideon wanted to go after her, and simultaneously wished she could forget that Harrow even existed. She dealt with her conflicting desires by ignoring them utterly. Harrow was uninjured, and the Fifth were seeing to Coronabeth; Gideon was not equipped to deal with either her surly-but-magnificent cavalier, or a Third princess with the vapours. Broken bones however…

Gideon kneeled beside Naberius, who had made no move to get up, or even given any indication that he was aware the match was over and Harrow was gone. It took less than a moment to confirm her suspicions; the wrist had broken cleanly and would be a simple enough fix for a bone adept of her calibre, though there was a whole host of other damage to the flesh around the bone. Still, with Coronabeth to deal with the swelling and bruising - once she was conscious enough to do so - he’d have full use of the arm again within the hour.

The knee, however… it was crushed. Piecing the disparate fragments back together would be long, painstaking work. Gideon quickly addressed the wrist, and then, with a sigh, settled in for the afternoon. She considered asking the others to help her move him to somewhere more comfortable, but that would have been an unnecessary cruelty; Naberius was beyond comfort, and Gideon hadn’t spent eighteen years in a House of nuns and penitents without learning how to ignore the discomfort that went with kneeling on hard ground for hours at a time. 

She tuned out her awareness of the room around her, and then her awareness of even her own body, focusing only on the splintered mess of patella. She’d done exercises like this, many times, under the watchful eyes of Pelleamena Novenarius, though the knees were generally on corpses - her living congregation were prone more to breaking their hips than their knees - and so she ended up causing a little more soft-tissue damage than she’d have liked to; she just kept forgetting to account for the living, bleeding flesh. 

Still, the Third were known for flesh magic, so Gideon allowed herself to focus on the bone, trusting that Naberius’ own necromancers could take care of the rest. Though she dabbled in animaphilia, she knew she was a hobbyist at best, and it was one thing to try things on herself, when it would be no one’s problem but her own if they didn’t work, and something else entirely to meddle inexpertly with another human being.

By the time she was done, she was sore, starving, and exhausted. She blinked in light which - from her perspective - had suddenly sharpened, and realised that the sun had set while she worked and the room was now harshly illuminated by bright humming tubes running the length of the ceiling. Looking around, she saw that the room had emptied; only Harrow and Coronabeth remained. 

Naberius was unconscious, which was probably for the best - even when not directly painful, the feeling of bones shifting under your skin was disconcerting. Gideon knew hadn’t been able to avoid snagging a couple of nerves on some particularly unwieldy bone splinters, which would have been excruciating, and hoped that he’d passed out quickly. He was an ass, but her appetite for vengeance had been sated long before the fight had finished, and she suspected she wasn’t the only one wishing that Coronabeth had put aside her Third House hubris and called the bout as soon as his wrist had been fractured. Even Abigail, for all that she’d engineered the situation, can’t have expected that the princess would let things go so far. 

She surveyed her work with visual, rather than necromantic perception for the first time in hours, and noted with irritation the swollen, fluid-filled sack of Naberius’ left hand, below the newly-healed wrist. She could understand Coronabeth not dealing with the knee - it was poor etiquette to get involved in another necromancer’s working uninvited, and for very good reason; when two incompatible theorems curdled together the results could be disgustingly catastrophic - but it had been _hours_ , and Gideon hadn’t been anywhere near the wrist. There was simply no justification for the way that Coronabeth sat idly at the side of the room while blood and lymph continued to seep from the damaged vessels in her cavalier’s arm and pool there, potentially compressing the nerves or compromising blood flow to the hand. Were the Third so ruthless that they’d allow their cavalier primary to be permanently disabled for the simple crime of losing a duel?

Well, even if the Third would allow it, she would not. She could not like him as a person, but she could respect his skill with the blade, and the swordswoman in her would sooner destroy a stained glass window than an artist like Naberius. 

“What are you _doing?”_ she demanded of Coronabeth. She’d have liked to stand, knowing that she didn’t cut quite as commanding a figure kneeling on the ground, but her head was swimming in a way that told her that it would be unwise to try and get to her feet. She’d thrown a lot of thanergy at her attempts to solve the apple challenge, what felt like years ago now but had only been that morning, on the assumption that she would spend the afternoon on nothing more taxing than some light reading, so her reserves had been low even before spending hours on complex and meticulous necromancy. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, wrecked. “Get over here and help him!”

Gideon turned back to her patient and noticed with concern that the swollen hand was paler than it should be; a gentle touch confirmed her suspicions; the skin was icy cold. _It could just be shock,_ she thought, trying to keep from assuming the worst. He was pale and clammy everywhere that she could see - the hand wasn’t necessarily lost. She cursed herself for lacking the expertise to tell. Even his energy was ambiguous; she had spent hours flooding his system with thanergy, and he was too awash with the stuff for her to have a hope of detecting any tell-tale uptick in his own cells’ thanergy production, that might indicate a mass die-off of his cells. 

Then Gideon kicked herself - she was too tired, and not thinking. She reached out to check the other hand, and it was noticeably warmer than the left. _Fuck._ She checked the injured wrist for a pulse, and couldn’t find one. There was no possible innocuous explanation for _that_. She looked up from her examination and discovered that Coronabeth was not, in fact, getting over here and helping her cavalier.

“What are you thinking?” she said, swaying a little on her knees as she turned her head too quickly to look at Naberius’ necromancer, “he could lose the hand entirely if you don’t attend to it. What sort of backwards, insane fucking sadists _are_ you on the Third that you’d leave him like this for hours?”

Coronabeth looked distinctly uncomfortable. Perhaps, being a princess, she was unused to being called out on her bullshit. Well, she’d better get used to it pretty damn fast, because Gideon would not stand for this.

“I wasn’t sure what you were doing,” Coronabeth said. She was clearly trying to sound arch and commanding, but was too miserable to pull it off. Her pretty features were drawn into a mask of horror, and her eyes were shadowed enough to match her sister’s. 

“I’m a _bone_ adept,” Gideon pointed out far more calmly than she wanted to; there was something skittish and desperate in Coronabeth’s eyes, and Gideon sensed that it wouldn’t take much of a push for Coronabeth to abandon her cavalier entirely and flee. “I was fixing the bones. _You_ are a flesh adept, so fix his flesh.” 

“You study animaphilia; you said so yourself. Surely anything that there is to be done, you can do.”

“Okay,” Gideon was really having to fight her temper, and the urge to ask Harrow to shake the Third necromancer by the shoulders until all the stupid fell out. “One: as previously stated I am a bone adept; that is my specialty, animaphilia is a hobby at best. Two: I am fairly certain that if I attempted so much as a thanergetic fart right now I would pass out - you know that his patella was shattered, right? That was far from a simple fix. And, most compellingly, to my mind, Three: he is _your_ cavalier which makes him your damn responsibility, _not mine._ Now, unless you want me to go shout it from these charmingly decrepit rooftops that the Third House wouldn’t know their duty if it bit them in the fucking ass, you will get over here and do your job.”

Okay… perhaps she hadn’t kept the _tightest_ grip on her temper there, but she was doing her best.

“I _can’t!”_ Coronabeth wailed, tears starting to flow down her cheeks

“Corona…” Gideon tried a different approach, “look, I saw you faint, I get it; you’re embarrassed about being a necromancer who's squeamish. It’s fine. I’ll be right here with you, okay, but you need to do this, and you need to do it quick.”

“I’m not.” the princess replied.

“Not squeamish? Then why…”

“Not a necromancer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the amazing Pipistrelle for helping me fix a couple of medical inaccuracies on this chapter and the next one - all awesomeness is hers, any errors are entirely mine!


	26. Chapter 26

No sooner had the words sprung from Coronabeth’s lovely lips than she clamped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with shock and terror.

Gideon could only blink, dumbfounded, for a moment, while she replayed the words in her head, hoping that they’d make more sense a second time through. They didn’t.

“Yes you are.”

Coronabeth shook her head, without dropping her hands from her mouth. 

Gideon had about a billion questions, and no time to ask them. “Fuck.” she said instead.

Now, at last, Corona’s hands fell limply to her lap. “Fuck.” she agreed.

Coronabeth finally got to her feet, and came to join Gideon, sinking into a dejected heap on the floor next to Naberius’ unconscious body.

“Then go get someone! Get Ianthe!” A thought occurred to Gideon then: “Wait, Ianthe _is_ a necromancer?”

Coronabeth nodded.

“Then go get her!”

“I can’t; she told me to leave her alone to work,” Coronabeth said, miserably, which raised even more questions, but before Gideon could really consider them, Corona raised her arm, bringing her hand so close to Gideon’s face that Gideon almost flinched, but Coronabeth didn’t strike her, she simply held her hand, palm up, wrist exposed, looking at Gideon expectantly.

“Harrow…” Gideon said, warningly, hearing the ring of Harrow’s rapier as she drew it from its sheath. “She didn’t touch me.” Harrow didn’t put her sword away, but nor did she do anything with it, which Gideon supposed was the most she could hope for with another necromancer… fuck, no. Not a necromancer. With… whatever the hell Coronabeth was, in such risky proximity to Harrow’s adept.

“What _are_ you doing?” Gideon asked.

“Use me,” Coronabeth said with desperate urgency. “Use me to save him.”

“You want me to…” Gideon was more than a little lost, “give him your hand?”

“No! Use my flesh to refuel yourself so that you can save _his_ hand. Ianthe does it all the time.”

Gideon’s - thankfully empty - stomach gave a lurch. “And by use… you mean…”

“Consume.”

“Right… and Ianthe does this all the time?”

“Usually with Babs, but yes.”

Well, there was a mental image that Gideon _really_ had not needed. She filed ‘Ianthe eating Babs’ away in the same dark recess of her brain which stored her memory of the time she’d accidentally imagined Crux’s ass.

Suddenly, there was Harrow, knocking away Coronabeth’s arm with her own. Gideon was so lightheaded from overexertion that the entire conversation held something of a hazy unreality, and that was probably the only thing which kept her from screaming at Harrow’s implied ‘if my adept is going to eat anyone, she’s going to eat me.’

“I’m going to need both of you to back the fuck up before I absolutely lose my shit, ‘kay? Now, I don’t care if she’s busy; if your sister doesn’t want a cavalier without an off-hand, she’ll forgive the interruption. Go get her.”

“I can’t… if she finds out you know our secret, she’s as likely to try and kill you as she is to help Babs. And besides, I don’t know that she could do what you’re asking. I don’t know that _anyone_ could. Medical necromancy is basically an oxymoron, isn’t it? I guess I don’t know much about bone magic, but I didn’t even know what you were doing sat there for so long. You really fixed his bones?”

“Of course - don’t you have any bone adepts at all on the Third? The knee was a pain in the ass - you really shouldn’t have let the duel go that far - but the wrist was a cinch. The wrist I could have done basically before I was weaned.”

“We have a few. They make constructs, mostly. I’ve never heard of anyone healing _anything_ with necromancy.”

“You’re really refusing to go and get your sister?”

“It would do more harm than good, I know it would.”

Gideon closed her eyes, just for a moment, and tried not to think about how tempting it would be to simply wring every Third House neck and be done with the whole godforsaken lot of them.

“Harrow?”

“I’m not leaving you here with _her_.” Harrow said, tone implying that Gideon was an idiot for even asking, which was probably fair. 

"I hate everyone," Gideon said, to no one in particular. "There is not a single person in the universe that I do not hate right now."

She took a deep breath, rolling up her sleeves and trying to ignore the trembling of her hands. This wasn't the stupidest thing she'd ever done, but it came pretty damn close, and she knew that she'd probably end up regretting it. But that didn't mean that she'd be able to live with herself if she didn't at least try.

Ignoring the lance of pain in her head, and the nauseating drip of blood down the back of her throat, Gideon brought one hand to her neck, worrying the familiar bumps and grooves of the teeth strung on her necklace. She wouldn’t usually allow herself such an obviously comfort-seeking gesture when observed, but she needed their solid reassurance as she put her free hand gently over Tern’s wounded one and went to work. 

Flesh, she quickly discovered, was an absolute bitch to work with. Bone held a template of itself; it _wanted_ to take the shape it had been born to. That was why springing a whole construct from a fragment of bone was so easy; it was just a case of encouraging the bone to extrapolate and build upon its innate structure. Non-skeletal forms, like the flower she’d built for Coronabeth (which had actually been modified ethmoid tissue, since that lent itself most readily to resembling petals), were always far harder than constructs

Flesh didn’t have that topological resonance; it didn’t remember itself the way that bone did. Gideon had always assumed that the reason flesh constructs weren’t a thing, the way that skeletal ones were, was because - without a skeleton to hold it up - the flesh wouldn’t be able to do anything useful, and if you were making a skeleton anyway, why waste time or energy on clothing that skeleton with tendon, and cartilage, and muscle, and all the other messy stuff? It seemed that in actuality, flesh constructs weren’t a thing, because they _couldn’t_ be. 

Not only was flesh uncooperative, a primordial ooze of undisciplined goo, on the cellular level, but Gideon had to contend with the fact that necromancy was the definition of a one-trick pony. You couldn’t use thanergy to restore something to life - unless you were God, at least - so Gideon had to work tactically, figuring out ways in which a creative application of death could actually promote healing.

She took inspiration from her experiences with animaphilia, but that only helped to a certain extent. It was one thing to build muscle by killing off a strategic assortment of muscle fibres, mimicking the damage of strenuous exertion, and encouraging the development of more and stronger muscle. It was a different thing entirely to work out which combination of cells had to be destroyed to promote the flow of blood and lymph away from the swollen tissues; how much tendon she could safely whittle away to reduce the pressure on Naberius’ nerves, arteries, and veins without the risk of compromising strength or function. 

In a way, it was satisfying to really get her teeth into a complex work of necromancy without an audience to question or criticise her split-second decisions. On the other hand, she’d been exhausted before she started, and working on such a delicate, microscopic scale, with such high stakes if she made even a single error, she was starting to feel like her brain was liquefying and dripping from her nose, ears, and eyes, along with the copious amounts of blood she knew she was losing.

It was getting harder and harder to focus. Rationally, a part of her knew that she should stop; she’d long since burned through her reserves of thanergy, and had started on the thalergy, which should have hurt - it should have hurt a lot; she was essentially siphoning her own soul to fuel her work - but she was so far removed from her own body that the pain barely registered. The latticework of Naberius’ cells, with their intermingled thanergy and thalergy started to blur and swim in her necromantic vision, a sure warning sign that that she needed to stop, but there was so much work still to do, so many blood vessels still leaking, so many dying cells spewing toxins that needed to be flushed before they could set off a cascade of further cell death. _Just a little more_ , she thought, and then everything went black, as she died.


	27. Chapter 27

Well, passed out. But it _felt_ a hell of a lot like dying. The next time Gideon was conscious of anything outside of Naberius’ fluid-filled ruin of a hand, the light had changed again; now it was blessedly dim. That wasn't the only thing that had changed. She was lying down; which wasn't a surprise, but the surface beneath her was neither cold nor hard, and that _was_ surprising. As her vision swam into focus, Gideon saw that she was back in the Ninth's quarters. There was a slender void beside the bed which resolved itself into Harrow's black-robed figure.

"The hand?" Gideon asked.

"How should I know?" Harrow asked, before continuing with a certain familiar derision, "I wasn't aware that 'building relationships with the other Houses' would involve whoring yourself out to the Third."

"Excuse me?"

"You refuse to exert yourself in any way in service of your own House, but you'll destroy yourself for a pretty princess of the Third? However far I try to lower my expectations of you, you still manage to disappoint me."

"You think I did that for _Coronabeth_? That whole House is madder than a box of frogs and I want nothing to do with whatever twisted dynamic they have going on. I had to do what I did, because what sort of image does it give the other Houses if the Ninth cripple a man in a friendly match?"

"If you thought that was a friendly match, then you were not paying attention, Reverend Daughter. I thought you understood that much when the Fifth named the terms, but perhaps I am again overestimating your meagre intellect."

"It's one thing to kick that idiot on his ass and make him think better of insulting another cavalier that way, but Harrow, however much of a colossal douche he was, no one intended things to get that far. I'm not blaming you," Gideon hastened to add, when Harrow opened her mouth to object, "you fight to win; you always have, and I respect that. Coronabeth Tridentarius is a fool for not crying mercy the second his wrist was broken. But we don't know how long we're all going to be here, and I'd sooner not spend my time having to look out for a knife in the back. The Third House are too powerful - we'd be stupid to make enemies of them if we can avoid it, however much I am growing to dislike them."

Gideon wasn’t sure if Harrow was entirely mollified by her explanation, but at least it seemed that no more insults or accusations of treachery were forthcoming.

“How did you even get me back here, anyway?” Gideon asked, curiously. She couldn’t envision Harrow leaving her for long enough to find assistance, anymore than she could imagine Harrow throwing an unconscious Gideon over her shoulder and carting her the whole distance alone; however strong Harrow might be, Gideon had approximately twice her bulk. Although her head hurt, it was the kind of headache she associated with too much necromancy, not with being dragged feet-first up and down several flights of stairs.

“The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Houses came looking when you weren’t at dinner. The Sixth claim some medical proficiency, and so they went with Crown Princess Tridentarius and Naberius the Third so that they could check over his injuries once he was properly situated. The Fifth helped me bring you back here.” 

Harrow looked deeply unhappy. She paused a minute, before continuing: “They are in the sitting room. They insisted on staying until you woke, even when I told them that this would not be necessary.”

“Abigail and Magnus are good people, Harrow. There’s no need to be so uptight. They’re probably the least likely ones to try and smother me in my sleep out of everyone here - including you.” Gideon didn’t quite know if she intended that last as a joke. If she did, it fell flat. When Harrow spoke again, it was with the painfully clipped tone that Gideon associated with the worst of Harrow’s _‘I am but your obedient servant oh holy Reverend Daughter’_ bullshit.

“What are your instructions, my adept?”

“Go tell them I’m okay.” Gideon squinted at the gloom, trying to work out if the windows were curtained, or whether it was fully dark outside. “I’m sure they have things to be getting on with, which don’t involve waiting on a necromancer without the sense to stop practicing before she knocks herself out.”

Harrow said nothing, crossing to the other side of the room and disappearing through the door to what she’d apparently designated their ‘sitting’ room. Gideon supposed that was an appropriate enough appellation, given the mismatched accumulation of chairs, settees, chaise-longues and stools which cluttered the spare room.

A few moments later, Abigail came in, shadowed by a still-silent Harrow.

“How are you feeling, Gideon? Magnus has gone to make you some soup.”

“You don’t need to do that!” Gideon felt acutely uncomfortable at the thought of Magnus inconveniencing himself because of her stupidity in overworking herself so drastically.

“Nonsense, it’s no trouble, and you missed dinner. We can’t have a growing girl like you missing meals now, can we?” Gideon forebore to mention the regularity with which she missed meals.

Instead, she replied: “Do you know how Naberius is doing?”

“No idea, but the Sixth are a wonder; don’t you worry yourself. Naberius Tern is not your responsibility.” Abigail frowned unhappily. “I thought better of Coronabeth; if I’d had the slightest inkling that she’d allow him to be so grievously hurt…” Abigail shook her head. “Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now. From what I saw, the damage wasn’t as bad as it looked, and you did stellar work on the knee; I wouldn’t have even known he’d taken a blow there if I hadn’t watched it happen. I suppose it was a cleaner break than it first appeared? Even so, you must have worked fast, to seal over both breaks before the rest had a chance to swell.”

Gideon decided not to bother correcting Abigail that it had, in fact, taken hours to fix the bones, and hours more to do what she could for the surrounding tissues before she’d been totally depleted. She wasn’t going to take Coronabeth - who had confessed to being both a liar, and not a necromancer - at her word when she insisted that this sort of healing wasn’t possible with necromancy. It evidently _was_ possible, given that Gideon had done it. But if there was any chance that such things weren’t common practice in the other Houses, well, there was no harm in keeping her cards a little close to her chest until she knew more. 

She felt a little uncomfortable, keeping things from Abigail Pent, but it took more than a couple of friendly meals with the other Houses to overcome a lifetime of secrecy, and she told herself that it wasn’t really relevant information - it’s not like she was hiding anything that Abigail really needed to know. They'd only agreed to collaborate on the challenges, after all.

Gideon couldn’t help dozing, lightly, as Abigail moved on to talking about less sensitive topics. About how Jeannemary was ‘very taken’ with Harrow, and would never admit it herself, but if Harrow ever felt like training with the younger cavalier, she’d be delighted. About the anniversary she and Magnus had coming up in a few weeks, and how they were considering holding a dinner party or other group celebration, as a break from all the hard work. Speculation about what the other labs might hold, and whether Abigail might hazard a summoning. Idle chatter, mainly, and Abigail didn’t seem to mind the conversation being one-sided. Gideon found it remarkably easy to relax, though relaxation wasn’t something she was accustomed to… well, at all, really, but especially not in the presence of an older necromancer.

She roused enough to eat the soup Magnus brought which was rich and flavourful; she didn’t savour it as she wanted to, because the second she caught a whiff of the savoury aroma, it was all she could do not to throw away the spoon and just raise the bowl to her lips and drink. She was more hungry than she had any right to be, on a day when she’d had both breakfast and lunch - seconds of lunch, no less. She was briefly concerned that she’d still be hungry after finishing the soup, but Magnus was apparently no stranger to teenage appetites - or to the physiological needs of necromancers who’d pushed themselves too far. When Gideon was done, she was certain she couldn’t have managed so much as another mouthful. 

Seeing her eyelids drooping uncontrollably, the Fifth left once Gideon had finished eating. Abigail kept shooting glances over to the warded wardrobe where Gideon had stashed her sword, and looked like she wanted to say something - maybe ask about her warding techniques? But Magnus ushered her out before she could. Gideon had just enough time to notice Harrow still standing by her bed, and then she was gone.


	28. Chapter 28

When Gideon woke next, there was light showing around the edges of the curtains, and Harrow was - unbelievably - asleep in the chair next to the bed. Gideon didn’t feel amazing, but she felt a damn sight better than she knew she had any right to be, and hoped that didn’t mean she’d done a half-assed job on fixing up the Third cav. Much as he annoyed the shit out of her, she didn’t wish him any worse fate than a string of catastrophically terrible hair days. 

Gideon realised that, if she was quick, she might be able to sneak out and find out what the key she'd obtained led to, and why Bob wanted her to have it. She felt hypocritical in the extreme, ditching Harrow after her little diatribe the day before about sticking together, but hopefully she'd be back before Harrow even realised she was gone. A quick scan of the surroundings told her that Harrow's book was either still on her person, or in her room, which Gideon wasn't about to go snooping in. _Oh well_ , it would have been to much to hope that Harrow would leave it lying around, and Gideon thought she'd clocked the room she needed to head for the day prior, when ostensibly just checking the book for the door with the same symbol as the key from the apple challenge. 

Gideon threw a clean robe on over yesterday's dirty clothes, not wanting to take the time to change properly and risk Harrow waking. Then she opened the door just enough to slip through, closing it behind her as quietly as she could. She ended up taking a somewhat roundabout route, diverting any time she heard voices, not wanting to risk running into anyone. At last she made it to the door, which was situated on a terrace. Taking a breath, she opened the door.

This lyctoral lab was an open-plan bomb wreck. There were three long lab tables covered in old, disused tools, splotches of what looked to be russet fungus, abandoned beakers, and used up pens. The floor underfoot was hairy carpet, and in one corner there was a hideous, slithery tangle of what Gideon realised must be sleeping bags. In another corner, an ancient chin-up bar sagged in the middle alongside a strip of towel left to hang for a myriad. Everywhere there were bits of paper or shaken-out clothes, as though somebody had left the place in a hurry or had simply been an unbelievable slob. Spotlights shone down hot on the ruined jumble. 

She riffled briefly through the papers left on the desk, before realising that she was in too much of a hurry to waste time looking at anything now which she could conceivably take with her for later perusal. Instead, she turned her attention to what was fixed in place. Much like back in the other laboratory, there was a theorem carved into a big stone slab pinned down in a dusty back corner, and covered up with loose-leaf flimsy. Gideon made a note, and continued her perusal of the room, finally stopping in front of a faded pinboard, riddled thick with pins, all with bits of string attached. 

There were rainbow splotches of pins all over the board. There were tiny clusters, and Gideon noticed that at the centre of each cluster there was one white pin; the smallest and most numerous clusters had three pins fixed around one white pin. Some others had five or six. Then there were two other separate whorls of pins, each made up of dozens alone, and then one enormous pin-splotch: more than a hundred of them in a rainbow of colours, thickly clustered around one in white. Something about the board felt incredibly important to Gideon; she hunted around, trying to find some blank flimsy, and a pen that still worked.

She flipped open a ring-binder which was stuffed so full to bursting that it could hardly have been described as ‘closed’, intending to turn to the back, in case there were unused pages there, but noticed that the binder did not contain papers or writings, aside from the first page, which consisted of a faded note that had once been yellow, the letters still legible in a short, curt hand:

CONFIRMED INDEPENDENTLY HIGHLIGHTED 

BEST OPTION

ASK E.J.G.

YRS, ANASTASIA.

P.S. GIVE ME BACK MY CALIPERS, I NEED THEM

The ‘Anastasia’ caught Gideon’s eye. You couldn’t trip in the Ninth House without falling over an Anastas, an Anastasia, or an Anastasius. Anastasia had been the mythic founding tomb-keeper, and grandmother of the House, and the subject of at least two of Ortus’ poems. Gideon wondered whether this was the same Anastasia.

The hundreds of pictures which made up the rest of the binder were hasty, low-quality snaps of men and women from the shoulders up, squinting at the camera, eyes half-shut as though they hated the light: most of them looked very serious and solemn, as though posing for a mug-shot. Some of these men and women had been crossed out. Some had a few ticks against their picture. On the back of each picture was a name, and the names were strange, like none Gideon had ever heard; Tyler, Giorgi, Maechynnleighe, Zainab, Karim…

Bob. 

Gideon flicked back, looking again at that picture, trying to fit muscle and tendon and bone over the skull she remembered. Was this Bob’s face? 

No time to think about that. She carried on flicking quickly through, still hoping for blank notepaper, and then paused again.

The overexposure did not disguise a head-and-shoulders photo of the man they all called Teacher, bright blue eyes a desaturated sepia, still smiling from a lifetime way. He looked not a day older or younger. And his photograph had been ringed around in a black marker pen.

There was no notepaper; Gideon ended up scrawling on the inside cover of the binder itself, copying down the pinboard as exactly as she could at speed. Then, still holding the binder, she went back over to the theorem stone. This time, as she looked more closely, she saw that next to the edge of the stone itself was a tooth. She picked it up; it was a premolar, with long and horrible roots, brown with age. As soon as she had it in her hand, she could feel the tracery of previous necromancy worked upon it, and she knew what to do; it unfolded in her hand as she turned it into a long ribbon of enamel, an orange with the skin taken off and flattened, a three-dimensional object turned two-dimensional. 

Written on the tooth in tiny, tiny letters was this:

FIVE HUNDRED INTO FIFTY

IT IS FINISHED!

Gideon didn’t want to think about this too much, but already the pieces were starting to come together in her mind. She hadn’t counted, but if she had to guess… she’d have said that there were fifty white pins in the pinboard, and five hundred rainbow ones; five hundred photos in the binder, fifty of which were ticked. Including Bob. Including Teacher. Sweat was starting to prickle down her back. She’d been gone too long, and discovered too much. She needed to get out of here.

Gideon scribbled down the theorem carved into the stone without really taking it in; there would be time for that later. Her mind was racing, realising the horrific implications of what she'd seen. The skeletons were old, dating back to the days of the resurrection, constructs animated by their own revenants, fueled by the spirits of others, fixed in place and unable to move on. Gideon could see now why they wanted her to find this; this room answered a lot of questions, and presented a lot more. Did they still want to be here? And if not, what could she do about it? Was there enough information in this room to show her how to help them move on, if that was their desire? Why else would they have directed her here?

And that was without even thinking about Teacher. She marvelled that he (they?) seemed so coherent, though she supposed that the disparate spirits had, by now, had the better part of a myriad to learn to work together. Even so; she couldn't imagine the time, and the isolation, and what it must be like to live as some sort of abandoned experiment. And, inevitably, she thought of Harrow, made from the souls of the dead just as unwillingly as Teacher had been, and just as abandoned by her creators. She felt a devastating upwelling of emotion, and worried for a moment that she might be about to cry; she told herself it was only for the tragedy of this strange, sad house, decaying around so many trapped souls, themselves doomed to stay fixed and whole and unchanging as their world crumbled around them. 

She did not cry for Harrow. She had sworn years ago never to shed another tear over Harrowhark Nova. 

Gideon had wondered whether the facility through the hatch would hold necromantic atrocities on a par with what Harrow's parents had done when they created her, but the worst thing she'd yet encountered was here, in this homely, cluttered room. She collected together what flimsy she could, stuffing loose pages into the back of the binder, and copied down key points of the rest, shoving the whole in her robe before leaving - she didn't have time to linger. Out on the terrace again, she locked the door behind her, and looked contemplatively at the key she held. 

That room wasn't just a necromantic resource, a simple source of knowledge, it was a disclosure of secrets that neither she, nor the lyctors who had presumably sealed these rooms up centuries ago, had any right to tell. How might Harrow have felt, if her parents had written up the theorem used in her creation and displayed it so cruelly? What right did Gideon have to let anyone else gain access to this room? Even if she kept the key herself, she couldn't be vigilant all the time - particularly if she was going to make a habit of knocking herself out patching up idiot cavaliers. Before she could change her mind, she tossed the key over the edge, down into the sea so far below, before sloping back to the Ninth quarters.


	29. Chapter 29

When Gideon got back to the Ninth quarters, she slipped inside as silently as she could, reassured to find the lights still out, curtains still closed. Maybe she'd gotten away with it. Opening the door to her room, she let her eyes adjust to the gloom, until she was able to pick one particular black shadow out from the rest - Harrow was still in the chair. She stripped off her robe, hiding the binder and other papers she'd recovered in her chest, closing the lid as soundlessly as she could, before climbing back into bed. She had _just_ started to relax, when a voice with all the comforting warmth of a charnel house came from the direction of the chair.

"Where have you been?"

_Shit_

"You're awake," Gideon said, stalling for time while she waited for her heart to stop trying to jump out of her chest.

"I am." Harrow replied.

"How..." Gideon wasn't sure the best way to work out exactly how much trouble she was in. "How, uh, long have you been awake?"

"Long enough."

"Long enough for what?"

"Long enough that if you try to tell me you were just in the bathroom, or some other falsehood, I am going to eviscerate you. Where did you go?"

"... Yeah. Not going to tell you. Sorry." Gideon genuinely was kind of sorry, actually, but that didn’t change anything. _Did it ever?_

Harrow's eyes narrowed, then darted over to Gideon's trunk, which - in her haste and worry about noise - she _hadn't locked._

Harrow was closer than she was, and faster, and could, presumably, move without some invisible bastard sticking a spike through her eye socket. She made it there first, and Gideon could only watch as Harrow opened the trunk, exposing a crumple of robes and, underneath, the binder.

"Harrow... I need you to not look at that."

"What happened to _'stick by my side, Harrow'_ ? Or _'You do your job, I'll do mine'?"_

"I _was_ doing my job."

"Without me! We agreed to stick together!"

"Well, I mean, technically _you_ agreed to stop ditching _me_. My side of the deal was to try and solve the challenges down in the facility, and I have been trying, so really, you shouldn’t criticise me..."

Harrow made a wordless noise of utter frustration.

"I thought you'd be impressed I woke up early for once - it's got to be the first time ever I've been up before you."

"Early?" Harrow raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, early. The sun is still coming up, which makes it early. I know we don't really have, like, a daily sunrise and stuff on the Ninth, but trust me - I've read books. If the sun is still touching the horizon, you can't call that late."

"Gideon, it isn't sun _rise,_ it's sun _set_ . You slept all day. And stop trying to change the subject! Give me one good - honest - reason why you went out without me, or I'm looking through whatever papers those are. I know you weren't dallying with your stupid sword, because you haven't taken the wards off the wardrobe. You're weak - look at you! You're visibly shaking, just from standing up, and you go out without your cavalier? I am supposed to _protect_ you, Reverend Daughter, which I can't do if you won't let me. Are you so determined to utterly ruin the Ninth that you're actually trying to get yourself killed?"

"I'm not trying to get myself killed. I was perfectly safe - I didn't even see anyone."

"And if you had seen anyone?"

"Well, lucky for me I've been trying to make friends with the other Houses so I don't have to worry about that sort of thing."

"What were you doing?"

"None of your business." That rude, and Gideon knew it, but she was hoping it would piss Harrow off enough that she’d drop the topic.

Instead, Harrow huffed, and turned back to the binder, opening it to a random - thankfully, not-Teacher - page."

"Photos? For pity's sake, Gideon - is this pornography? Did you sneak out without me so that you could scour Canaan House for filth?"

"Uh... yeah, sure. That's what I did. So you'd better close that now - some of the pictures get pretty graphic." Gideon couldn't help the sarcasm - she was actually faintly offended. The photo that Harrow had opened the binder to was an elderly, moustachioed gentleman, and about the furthest thing Gideon could imagine from 'her type'. On the scale from 'Crux to Hot', this photo barely got above a 2, and that was being charitable.

A shame, really. If Gideon had kept her fool mouth shut, Harrow might have accepted her initial conclusions, and left it there. Instead, her eyes narrowed with suspicion, and she started flicking through. That was too much for Gideon. She couldn't deal with the idea of Harrow figuring out what those photos really were, the seedy and grotesque secrets of Canaan House. The unfortunate parallels between her own life and that of the merry, erratic presence they knew as Teacher, and the awful things that the God Harrow loved and the Saints she admired were apparently capable of.

Ten thousand years. It was appalling enough when she thought of the lyctors, but surely they had more freedoms than the denizens of Canaan House? Surely they had at least the wherewithal to end things, if they decided eternity was too great a burden to bear?

Gideon launched herself forward, and tried to wrestle the binder from Harrow's grip. Gideon was larger, but Harrow was quick, vicious, and _not_ utterly exhausted. She retained possession of the increasingly-disarrayed collection of photos and loose papers, and in the process, the binder was flipped to its very front page. 

"Anastasia?" Harrow asked. "This is something to do with our House, and you would keep it from me? I am a _true_ daughter of the Ninth; if anyone is entitled to whatever knowledge this holds, it is me, not you!"

Gideon felt like the worlds hugest asshole, even contemplating saying what she was about to say, but preserving the confidences of Bob and the other skeletons was more important than trying to avoid hurting Harrow's feelings. Especially since she couldn't avoid hurting Harrow, even when she tried.

"It's necromancer business." She said, flatly. Harrow's fingers slackened slightly as her face went blank with shock, and Gideon managed to wrench the binder free. There was a moment of dangerous silence, and then Harrow turned and stalked away to the bathroom.

"Get changed and fix your paint, _Reverend Daughter_. It will be dinner soon, and I refuse to have the Ninth's sanctum invaded once again by the _Fifth_ , who are even more obsessed with filling your stupid stomach than you are. I didn't think such a thing was even possible."

Autodoors didn't slam, but Harrow still somehow managed to convey a slam with the faint _hiss-thunk_ as the bathroom door sealed itself behind her. 

_Well... that went great_.

Gideon grabbed a new set of robes from her trunk, and then closed it. She considered locking and warding it - she didn't want Harrow poking her nose in there, but equally, that was how Bob had gotten his last message to her. Well, she'd cross that bridge when she came to it; she'd been fairly lackadaisical about warding the Ninth quarters generally, and felt like changing that now would be like painting a big neon sign over the door saying that she had something juicy she wanted to hide from the other Houses. She locked the trunk, and stuck a few cursory wards on it, resolving to do more later when the mere thought of doing necromancy didn't hurt. Even the basic warding she'd applied made her head spin, and she decided to sit down and sort her paint before getting changed, to give the dizziness some time to subside.

Harrow looked exactly the same when she came out of the bathroom, but then, Harrow's paint and robes were always uniformly perfect; Gideon had no way of knowing whether she'd changed them, or just spent twenty minutes in the bathroom fuming over reckless necromancers. They walked out into the hallway in stony silence, but Gideon was once more too hungry to care about Harrow being angry; both her hunger and Harrow's anger were basically constant states of being for her, and the hunger was much easier to fix.

When they got to the dining room, Gideon noticed with interest that their usual table had an extra occupant; Coronabeth was there, sat opposite the Sixth, an empty space on the bench forming a handy buffer between her and the Fourth and Fifth Houses. This left not enough seats for both Gideon and Harrow, but Camilla got to her feet when they entered, indicating that Harrow should take her place. This did, unfortunately, mean that Gideon had to sit opposite her cavalier. It wasn't that Gideon wasn't more than accustomed to eating with people glaring at her; whenever Gideon couldn't contrive a reason to get out of it, she sat at Drearburh's top table with the Reverend Mother and Father, and Crux, and if that wasn't enough to put her off her food, then nothing would be. No, Gideon's real concern in sitting opposite Harrow was it was much harder not to notice how her cavalier pushed the food around her plate, eating only the tiniest of mouthfuls, and that with an expression of abject distaste. No wonder Harrow was as scrawny as a necromancer, if she refused to eat, but Gideon didn't remember Harrow being this averse to basic nutrition back on the Ninth.

Which is why, instead of paying attention to her own food, or the conversation around the table, Gideon found herself wondering whether perhaps Harrow was not quite so delighted as Gideon at the variety of food on offer here. She didn't know much about Harrow-at-seventeen, being as Harrow had spent the last few years avoiding Gideon at every opportunity, but she remembered Harrow pulling that same sour expression the time that Gideon had talked her into trying anything new, back when they were children, though the lines of misery and disgust had not been graven so permanently into her face back then.

She was so preoccupied, that she almost missed it when Abigail started talking to her: "... and Gideon, you needn't have worried, because Palamedes says he's doing quite nicely."

"Yes," Palamedes said, picking up the train of the conversation, "I'd love to talk to you more about what you did, Reverend Daughter; I honestly couldn't tell that there'd been a break at all, in either location, which is quite remarkable, given that I've been assured by several witnesses that the damage was visible to the naked eye. I hope I'm not stepping on any toes here; I know the Ninth is quite proprietary about their secrets, but I haven't heard of even the cohort's bone adepts being able to mend a break that quickly or cleanly. I'm absolutely kicking myself that we ducked out before things got interesting; there are at least half a dozen scholars back on the Sixth who would peel their own feet to get a look at your techniques."

“Uh,” she replied, eloquently. Gideon, whose innate tendency to self-aggrandizement had always been amply tempered by Pelleamena and Priamhark’s disdain, when it came to her necromancy (and Aiglamene’s natural reticence and inability to give an unqualified compliment, when it came to her sword), found that she was having a stupendously difficult time with the constant implication from all sides that what she’d done in fixing up Naberius’ injuries was either qualitatively, or quantitatively, unusual. Coronabeth’s opinion could be easily written off, as she was apparently not a necromancer at all. Abigail was harder to dismiss, but at the end of the day, she was a spirit-specialist and could be forgiven for knowing little about bones. But Palamedes? Palamedes, who was not only widely-read, but appeared pathologically incapable of venturing an opinion he couldn’t back up with a list of evidence and references as long as his arm?

She’d always had the impression that she was an indifferently-skilled bone adept, at best. If she was being honest, her interest in animaphilia had as much to do with a desire to practice something that literally no one on the Ninth knew or cared about in the slightest, and therefore couldn’t criticise in any informed fashion, as it had to do with vanity. Though, she couldn’t deny that she was devastatingly hot, and had done stellar work, both physically and necromantically, in enhancing her natural potential for hotness with possibly the most exquisite biceps in existence.

Though her biceps were a much more comfortable topic to dwell on, Gideon wrenched her thoughts back to the matter at hand. She took another mouthful of her dinner to buy herself time to consider how to respond.

“I’m a bit tapped out for now, necromantically speaking,” Gideon ventured.

“Even talking me through the theory…” he made a faint whuff, which Gideon was pretty sure came as a result of Abigail jabbing him in the ribs, and he sagged slightly as he finished, “whenever you’re recovered, of course.”

“It’s no problem,” Gideon lied. “Though I’m not sure how much you’ll get out of it. It was all fairly standard bone-magic.” Lied the liar, again. 

“If that’s ‘fairly standard bone-magic’, then then Ninth has been _seriously_ holding out on the rest of us.” Gideon wanted to bristle, but his comment didn’t feel particularly directed at her; if anything he sounded impressed, whether at her skill, or the Ninth’s ability to keep anything from generations of professionally nosy librarians.

Both to try and kill this conversation before it could go any further, and because she honestly wanted to know, Gideon turned to Coronabeth and said: “He is doing alright, though?”

Coronabeth toyed with half a bread roll left uneaten on her plate, tearing it into smaller and smaller scraps, and refusing to meet Gideon’s eyes. “He’s doing well physically, yes. He seems to have full sensation in his hand, though the Master Warden said he shouldn’t try moving it too much just yet.”

“We’re keeping it elevated, to help prevent any build up of fluids,” Palamedes interjected.

“But we’re very grateful for your help,” Coronabeth continued, in a way that made Gideon doubt that anyone but Coronabeth was part of that ‘we’. Coronabeth looked frankly miserable, and Gideon hadn’t failed to notice that she was apparently the only one around the table not on first-name terms with the others. 

Gideon didn’t want to sympathise with Coronabeth. She didn’t. That stupid deception of hers had almost cost a good man… well, a good _swords_ man, at least… his hand. And yet… to keep up that kind of a lie for a whole lifetime, to shackle yourself to your sister so that she could play the necromancer for both of you - as Ianthe must presumably have been doing - only to have her abandon you amongst strangers when something more interesting came along? Gideon hated a lot of things about her life - almost everything, really - but she’d have hated being useless _so_ much more. She wasn’t ready to forgive Coronabeth for the harm she’d allowed to befall her cavalier - or, was that Ianthe’s cavalier? - but forgiveness was on the horizon and approaching with unwelcome speed. It was difficult to stay angry at someone so completely alone and out of their depth.

So, when dinner was eaten, and they were all walking out, Gideon wrangled with her conscience, and finally said to Coronabeth: “fancy joining us for breakfast in the morning? We can move over to one of the bigger tables.”

The approving smile Abigail shot her silenced any remaining qualms Gideon had about extending the olive branch to the forsaken Third twin. She didn’t think she’d ever trust Coronabeth, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t at least eat together. 

She only hoped that this wasn’t a sign that Abigail was rubbing off on her; she didn’t intend to make a habit of collecting strays.


	30. Chapter 30

After dinner, Gideon and Harrow went back to the Ninth's quarters. Gideon was tired, but not sleepy - after sleeping for the better part of a day, she was pretty sure she'd just toss and turn if she tried to go back to sleep now, so she climbed back into bed, but instead of lying down to sleep, she sat up, leaning back against the headboard, which she'd padded with a few pillows, and pulled out her notebook to start reviewing the signs she'd noted down again, trying to let her fingers become familiar with the strange motions.

Harrow retreated to her small cupboard of a room, but came back out before long, saying waspishly: "if you're going to keep doing idiotic things and putting yourself in danger, I need to train. Your room has more space," _pretty sure it's supposed to be our room_ , Gideon thought, looking down at the cot tacked on to the base of her bed, but she didn't say anything. 

"I'm going to train here." Harrow continued, and when Gideon didn't object, Harrow stripped off her robe, which was a shock; even if it didn't expose so much as a square inch of extra skin, the spare lines of Harrow's body were far more visible in just her shirt and trousers. She even took off her boots, before starting to work through a familiar set of exercises. Aiglamene had taught Gideon the same ones when she'd realised that Gideon was serious about learning the sword, and it wasn't just a passing whim. Six months she'd spent on nothing more than this seemingly-pointless collection of contortions, before Aiglamene had let her pick up so much as a light bone training sword. Still, much as she'd never admit it to Aiglamene's face, they had helped a lot with her strength and flexibility. Gideon wasn't sure she'd have survived her first sword lessons without the months of conditioning first.

She wasn't sure why it had never occurred to her that Aiglamene might teach Harrow the same thing; most of their training probably had very little overlap, as a two-hander and a rapier used very different techniques, but these basic exercises would be useful regardless. Gideon wondered how many times Harrow had been doing the exact same thing in her own cell, as Gideon had worked her way through the patterns - first grumbling at their pointlessness, and later learning to appreciate them, not just for the nimble strength they brought her body, but also for the quiet they seemed to instil in her mind. She had a half-formed idea of trying to join Harrow now, and work through the exercises with her, but thought better of it almost instantly - not only was she too tired to do more than fall on her ass, but she knew enough to know that Harrow would interpret such a thing as competition, rather than camaraderie.

"Keep your eyes to yourself! This isn't something from one of your sordid magazines; I'm working." Harrow snapped. Gideon looked away, feeling her cheeks grow hot. She _hadn't_ been staring at Harrow's body, not really. She'd just been thinking, and forgotten to shift her eyes to something more innocuous. She turned her attention back to the list of signs she was attempting to learn, doing her best to focus, and ignore the movement in her peripheral vision. 

Gideon had actually managed to get back into her work with enough concentration that she’d almost forgotten that Harrow was still there, by the time Harrow piped up: “you’re trying to talk to the skeletons?”

Gideon inhaled, startled, and spent the next few seconds choking on a lungful of saliva. Harrow came over to stand by the bed, though whether that was with the intention of intervening if Gideon started suffocating in earnest, or whether she just wanted a front row seat to Gideon’s imminent demise, Gideon wasn’t sure. 

When Gideon could speak again, she said, “What?”

“You want to talk to the skeletons,” Harrow said, as matter-of-factly as if they were discussing the weather - moreso, in fact, since the whole concept of atmospheric weather was still novel and exciting to Gideon. 

“Why would I want to talk to constructs?” 

“Because they _aren’t_ constructs. I’m not an idiot, Gideon. The skeletons of this House surpass what my parents are capable by an inconceivable margin, and my parents are the best bone magicians the Ninth has ever produced. Either I must accept that there is another House which can so drastically exceed our skill - which I _cannot_ accept - or these skeletons are not constructs.”

Gideon said nothing.

“Besides - those shapes you’re making with your hands. I saw a couple of skeletons doing stuff like that at each other, when they thought no one was there.”

 _Fuck_. It was so easy to forget, when Harrow was a mostly-silent scowling spectre at her back that unspeaking didn’t mean unthinking. Harrow had a frightening intellect - frightening, because Gideon typically only encountered it when Harrow was using said intellect to mess with her.

“And I saw one of them leaving a note in your trunk.”

Gideon dropped her head into her hands. 

“Look, just… don’t tell anyone, okay? I don’t think we’re supposed to know, and they could get into trouble.”

“Who am I going to tell? Not everyone is as hell-bent on fraternization as you are, Gideon. Some of us don’t have any trouble remembering to which House we owe our loyalty. Though, if it was supposed to be such a secret, then why are they doing such a piss-poor job of keeping it that way, that even you figured it out?”

Gideon was pretty sure that none of the other Houses had a clue, but then, the other Houses weren’t bone specialists. Gideon found herself feeling oddly defensive of her new skeletal - friends? - and responded with more rancour than she intended to.

“They’ve been here for nearly a myriad, Harrow, all on their own. You can’t expect them to change ten-thousand years of habit just because a bunch of strangers have suddenly turned up.”

“Of course I can. They are servants of the First House, and should therefore be willing to endure more than a little inconvenience in service of the King Undying and the Locked Tomb.”

“Yeah, well, we aren’t all as perfect as you.” Gideon leaned forward to pat a square of empty bed. “Since you figured it out, you may as well join me. Languages are a bitch to learn on your own; it’ll be easier with two.”

“I’m not…” Harrow looked appalled, “I’m not getting into _bed_ with you!”

“Stop being such a prude. This bed is bigger than my whole cell back home! But fine, pull over a chair if you’d rather.

Harrow looked dubiously at the bed. "I'll stand."

"Come on, Harrow, don't be a pest. I'll give myself neckache looking down at the book and then having to crane my head up to look at you. I know you took the book of cavalier etiquette, rolled it up into a stick, and stuffed that stick up your ass, but we're in our own rooms, so you're off duty. You don't have to be my cavalier primary when it's just us, okay? You can be Harrow, and I can be Gideon, and you can help me learn to get my head around making words with my fingers."

"Cavaliers don't get to be off duty." Harrow grumbled, but she grumbled while pulling over a chair, so Gideon let it go.

After about twenty minutes of practice, Gideon thought that she'd nailed the small assortment of signs she'd noted down, and was wishing she'd brought the whole book from the library; she resolved to go and pick it up the next day. As she was thinking this, the door opened, and a skeleton came in, toting a basket of laundry.

"Oh, hi!” Gideon said. “Just the person! Oh, don't worry about Harrow, she knows. I didn't tell her - she figured it out, so don't blame me because my cav is a certifiable genius. Or... certifiable at the very least." Gideon couldn't resist the verbal jab - mainly to cover her embarrassment at having complimented Harrow where her cavalier could hear her - but acknowledged that she deserved the physical one she got in return, in the form of Harrow's fist in her arm; it was barely hard enough to bruise, so Harrow couldn't be _that_ cross.

The skeleton looked around, furtively, then shrugged as if to say _fuck it_ and came over. 

"I'm sorry," Gideon said, "I'm clearly the world's worst bone adept; I should be able to tell skeletons apart, but it takes me a while to recognise new, uh, skulls. I'll get there, I promise! I can always pick my mum's construct out from all the others back home." 

Damn, she was babbling. She just hadn't quite finished processing all the new information she'd learned, and still had to learn, regarding the skeletons' origins, and it was making her awkward. Surprisingly, Harrow came to her rescue. 

"You ought to be more careful, if you don't want to get caught out," she said with more gentleness than Gideon was accustomed to hearing from her, and only the barest minimum of scorn, "with the number of balconies, terraces, and split-level rooms in this place, it's easy for people to watch you without you seeing them. But you needn't worry that I have any intentions of interfering with your business, as long as you do not interfere with mine." Harrow raised her hands, watching to make sure that the skeleton's eyes were on her, before slowly and painstakingly spelling out her name in the alphabet they'd been learning - H-A-R-R-O-W, followed by the sign for 'friend'.

Gideon took her cue from her cavalier, and did the same, spelling out her name, only fumbling a little over the 'N', before adding the 'friend' sign too.

"We don't know many signs yet," Gideon cautioned, "but we're learning. What’s your name? Uh, if you don’t mind telling us."

Her name was Alexis. They didn’t get much further than that, because Gideon and Harrow still lacked the vocabulary to be able to hold any sort of a real conversation, but Alexis agreed to let Bob know that Gideon had gotten his message, and was ‘looking into things’. Harrow glared at her at the vagueness of that comment, but Gideon still wasn’t sure she could face having that conversation with Harrow - perhaps she was overthinking things, and Harrow wouldn’t find any troubling parallels between Teacher’s creation and her own conception, but it was so glaringly obvious to Gideon that she didn’t want to risk it.

Gideon also asked Alexis to let the rest of the skeletons know that, if any of them had the patience to spend their time teaching a couple of neophytes, they’d be welcome there any evening. Then, carefully not looking at Harrow as she said it, she asked whether there was any chance of getting plainer food for her cavalier at mealtimes. Alexis shrugged, nodded, and left.

Before Harrow had a chance to say anything, Gideon faked a huge yawn, which turned into a genuine yawn halfway through, and excused herself to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When she came back out, Harrow was gone, but the light spilling out from under the door to her little room reassured Gideon that Harrow had only retired to her own bed.

Tired as she was, Gideon’s mind was too full to go straight to sleep; she kept running over the new signs she’d learned. So instead, she took the wards down from her wardrobe, and got out her sword. She didn’t have the energy for any sort of practice, but after half an hour of cleaning and polishing the blade to a sheen, she was finally ready to go to bed. 

In a fit of what she hoped was not unfounded optimism, Gideon sheathed her sword, but didn’t hide it back behind wards; she left it out on the dresser next to her bed. After all, Harrow hadn’t stabbed her, even _once_ , and she’d had ample opportunity. The quiet evening of congenial scholarship had instilled hope in Gideon that perhaps, even if they could never get back the friendship they’d lost, she and Harrow might at least learn to coexist peacefully.


	31. Chapter 31

The sword was still there, and intact, the next morning, when Gideon woke to find a fully clothed and painted Harrow waiting with remarkable patience for her. Gideon took this as a good omen, and decided that thereafter she wouldn't bother hiding or re-warding her sword. When they went to breakfast, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Houses were sat at a larger table, and Coronabeth had joined them, though she was still diminished from the exuberant charm she’d had before the duel. She sat off to one side, leaving two empty seats between her and the Fourth, opposite Camilla and Palamedes. 

Gideon slid into the seat next to Coronabeth, and made occasional half-hearted efforts over the course of the meal to draw her into conversation, but these bore little success; given that Gideon had Harrow to the other side of her, and the taciturn Camilla opposite, the meal mostly passed in silence. Gideon did notice that Alexis seemed to have passed on her request; the bowl they brought Harrow contained not the vibrantly coloured and lavishly spiced soup that the rest of them were eating, but a plain porridge, and Harrow ate more of it than Gideon had seen her eat at any other meal since they’d arrived at the First, though still nowhere near what Gideon would consider to be ‘enough’.

Over the next few days, they established a comfortable routine. After breakfast, they headed down to the facility - they were still working on the first challenge, having decided that the challenges themselves must be important, or Teacher would have just given them the keys to the theorem rooms. So they decided that even though they'd obtained the key, they'd stick at the first challenge until they had all mastered the technique it was teaching, and could reliably transfer the apple intact from one plinth to the other. Gideon just observed that first morning, but the next day she felt she'd recovered enough to have another go herself. It went disastrously; she and Harrow were both incredibly tense in such close proximity to each other, and Harrow had a tendency to flinch, slightly, if Gideon made any sort of move in her direction. 

The flinching would be an issue, when it came time to transfer the apple, but they hadn’t even gotten that far; Gideon couldn't get her ward to stabilise. She'd think she'd constructed it perfectly, but when she tried to put it in place around the apple cradled in Harrow’s thin-fingered hands, it would fizzle every time. Even Isaac was having more success than she was; though he still hadn't completed the challenge either. Gideon was getting frustrated with her ineptitude, and even more frustrated by the horrible patience the other adepts were showing her, which Gideon suspected of being thinly-veiled condescension. That was probably unfair - she'd never known the older adepts to patronise Isaac, who was even younger than she was, and she had no _real_ evidence that they were patronising her now.

Still, she was wholly out of her comfort zone here. She was accustomed to achieving a level of success even on her very first attempts at a new theorem, and being thoroughly and vigorously criticised over even the slightest shortcoming. To achieve neither success nor criticism irked her. She kept waiting for the other adepts to drop the charade and harangue her as she deserved. 

When they'd had enough of being crammed altogether in the stuffy laboratory, they'd head back up for lunch. Coronabeth joined them now for most meals, though only for meals; after they’d finished eating, she’d head to the kitchen to fetch a plate to take back to the Third’s quarters for Naberius, who she insisted was recovering well, but hadn’t been seen since the day of the duel. 

In the afternoons they typically split into two groups; the adepts, minus Gideon, would retreat to the library or their private rooms to research, and the cavaliers, minus Camilla, went down to train together. Camilla seemed genuinely involved in Palamedes' work, so no one took it personally when she politely declined any invitation to join the other cavaliers. Gideon had initially joined the other adepts in the library, but Harrow refused to be separated from her, and Gideon honestly found it easier to think in the training room, surrounded by the quiet grunts and thuds of practice, than in the hush and gloom of the library, which reminded her so much of the Ninth that she was forever looking over her shoulder any time anyone made a sound, expecting Pelleamena to appear and chide her for studying something other than bonework.

After the disaster of Harrow's duel with Naberius, there were no actual matches, but the cavaliers did exercises - usually singly, but Magnus would often pair up with Jeannemary for some partnered drills. Sometimes Marta the Second would join the training, and on one occasion, Colum the Eighth had come into the room, but seeing Gideon and Harrow, he immediately left. Protesilaus the Seventh never joined them, and Gideon sometimes wondered how he spent his days, since most of the time when she saw Dulcinea, he wasn’t with her either. 

Harrow trained alone, but seemed content enough to do so in the company of her peers, as long as she could keep Gideon in sight. 

"You should pair up with Jeannemary," Gideon said one evening, as they were going back to their chambers to freshen up before dinner. 

"What?"

"Oh, come on, you can't tell me that you guessed about... _you know_ " - there was no one around that Gideon could see, but she still didn't like talking openly about Bob and the other skeletons, - "but you haven't noticed that Jeannemary always trains next to you when she’s on her own, and copies most of the exercises you do? Abigail as much as said that Jeannemary is very impressed with you."

"It's only sensible that we'd use the same moves and exercises," Harrow pointed out, waspishly "as we're of a similar height and reach."

"Now you’re being wilfully obtuse, and I _know_ you’re doing it to annoy me; there's more to it than that," Gideon insisted. "She obviously looks up to you. Come on - you must be bored doing the same old solo drills over and over. Why don't you ask her to work with you? Call it 'doing your part to strengthen inter-House relations.'"

Harrow grumbled, but didn’t object, and Gideon smiled to herself within her hood, the next day, when Harrow volunteered a suggestion to help improve Jeannemary’s form on a couple of moves - she had a tendency to lock her elbow. The day after that, Harrow tentatively offered to step in when Magnus, panting and red-faced, laughingly ended a drill he’d been running through with the Fourth cavalier. Gideon knew Harrow would never admit it out loud, but she suspected that Harrow secretly enjoyed the younger cav’s hero worship. Gideon knew herself, from Palamedes’ frequent reminders that he was desperate to learn more about her techniques with bone, that receiving the admiration of peers when one was accustomed to only criticism - as they both were - was uncomfortable, yes, and complicated, and made her feel a little like a fraud, but overall, it was also kind of - nice.

And, it seemed that even Harrow was not immune to the gregarious teen’s infectious good humour. It took Jeannemary a few days of wilfully ignoring all of Harrow’s attempts to keep their conversations brief, and focused solely on technical matters related to swordplay, but gradually, Harrow started to crack; one afternoon she expressed curiosity about the elaborate braiding of Jeannemary’s hair (Gideon actually listened to the answer to that question - she was fascinated herself, having never seen anyone with long hair prior to coming to Canaan House. It sounded like a lot of work, and Gideon decided she was content with her close-cropped hair). The next day, she asked how cavaliers primary were chosen on the Fourth. 

Like the bursting of a dam, this was all the opening Jeannemary needed to draw Harrow into conversation, and if those conversations revolved around Jeannemary and her life, with Harrow sharing no anecdotes about the Ninth, well, Black Vestals were expected to be reticent. Gideon listened to Harrow, speaking more than Gideon had heard since she’d learned to properly enunciate her Ts, and wondered what thoughts were going around Harrow’s head. Was she making the inevitable comparisons between Jeannemary’s childhood and her own? If so, what conclusions was she drawing?

For her own part, Gideon had to tune out most of Harrow and Jeannemary’s conversations; they brought back too much of the old obsession that Gideon apparently hadn’t tucked away quite as thoroughly as she thought she had. Who was her mother? Where was she from? What would her life have been like if she’d grown up with parents, far from the Ninth? Was her other mum or dad out there somewhere? It was pointless to speculate, but even after all these years, Gideon couldn’t help it.

Gideon nearly jumped out of her skin, a few afternoons later, when she heard a sound she hadn’t heard in years. Harrow laughed - a genuine laugh, not scornful or sarcastic - at something Jeannemary had said to her. She felt a pang, at that, and the text she was reading suddenly blurred as her eyes filled with tears. She knew that she’d been overly optimistic, even naive, thinking that Harrow would suddenly thaw towards her just because they were getting some time alone together on the First. She tried to be happy that Harrow was happy, tried to be happy that Harrow seemed to be making a friend, even if that friend wasn’t her. 

She _was_ happy that Harrow and Jeannemary were getting close. She was. That night, when they sat down to dinner, Jeannemary hissed at Isaac until he switched seats with her, so that Isaac sat at the end of the table, opposite Magnus, where Jeannemary usually sat. Gideon had taken to sitting at the other end of that bench as a buffer between Harrow and Coronabeth, just in case, and so by switching seats with Isaac, Jeannemary now sat next to Harrow. 

Gideon reminded herself, again, that she was happy that Harrow had a friend. And if the two chatted, quietly, over dinner - one of several Harrow traits Jeannemary had adopted was the ability to speak in a whisper which wasn’t audible in the next room - well, it wasn’t like Gideon was losing anything; Harrow had never spoken to Gideon during mealtimes, so what difference did it make if she spoke to Jeannemary instead of sitting in stone-faced silence?

Besides, Harrow _had_ thawed towards Gideon, somewhat at least. In the evenings, after dinner, they’d go back to the Ninth’s rooms and learn Auslan together. Sometimes they’d be joined by Bob or Alexis, or one of the other skeletons, helping them practice and correcting their grammar, but as often as not, it was just the two of them, and Harrow made no attempt to get out of these long evenings together. If she still called Gideon a moron a dozen times a night, at least she was tolerating Gideon’s company, and from time to time, she’d slip and call Gideon ‘Griddle’, or allow the slightest hint of a smile to twitch at the corners of her lips as she admonished Gideon for one signed pun or another. The progress was glacial, but it was there, and as they approached the end of their second week in Canaan House, Gideon was startled to realise that she was content with the new routines of her life. 

And so, of course, just as Gideon discovered happiness in the status quo, it changed.


	32. Chapter 32

The next day, Isaac and Jeannemary completed the apple challenge. Gideon congratulated them wholeheartedly, but it was difficult not to feel self-conscious about her utter lack of progress. She still couldn't get the ward in place. She tried a few times without anyone touching the apple, and was almost certain she'd gotten it right, but of course, without being able to move it, there was no way to tell for sure, and Gideon couldn't touch the apple herself without encountering the same issues of precision that Palamedes had raised during their first attempts, and whenever Harrow tried, Gideon tensed up so much that she lost it. She suggested that they finish for the morning after that - it wasn't that much earlier than they normally went to lunch, and the stench of her failure was thicker in the room than the stench of rotten apple; she just couldn't stand it. 

Maybe that was the reason that Harrow's habitual quiet chatter with Jeannemary about various stances and parries got on Gideon's nerves that day, or maybe it was Palamedes hinting for the billionth time that he'd love to schedule some time with her to talk bone magic - she still hadn't decided how honest she wanted to be about the work she'd done on Naberius' injuries, and was avoiding the issue by avoiding being caught alone with the overly-curious Sixth adept. Maybe it was the completely awful and unbearable kindness and understanding in Abigail and Magnus' eyes as she got curter and curter, and eventually stopped participating at all in the general conversation about the challenge, and the theorem they'd found from that key. It wasn't like Gideon had anything to contribute to the conversation anyway; she couldn't manage the task, and so, in a fit of pique, had decided she wasn't going to study the theorem until she'd 'earned it'. 

Probably just because they were so early to lunch, Coronabeth hadn't come to join them, but Gideon kept up her end of the table's fair share of surly, uncommunicative chewing without the princess's help.

Whatever the reason, for her foul mood, Gideon needed the sort of stress relief which only came from swinging a sword, so when lunch was over, she went back to the Ninth's quarters on the way to the training room, and took her sword with her. She was beyond caring what the other Houses might think of the heir of the Ninth wielding, not just a sword, but the kind of two-handed sword favoured by the lowest-ranked infantry. 

"I don't want to hear it," she growled as she strapped the scabbard to her hip, and thank the Lord Emperor himself, Harrow forbore to comment, though Gideon knew she'd probably have to face Harrow's opinions on the subject later. They came across Jeannemary and Magnus in the corridor leading to the stairs down to the dark little vestibule, and so the four of them together walked in to the training room almost an hour earlier than usual, to find that Gideon wasn't the only non-cavalier carrying a sword. 

Coronabeth swung around at the sound of the door opening, a rapier - Naberius' rapier, if Gideon wasn't mistaken - held up in a guard position. It was _definitely_ Naberius' trifold knife that she held in her off-hand. 

As soon as she saw who was there, Coronabeth put both blades behind her back, as though she had the slightest hope of discretion at that point. 

Gideon sighed - this was becoming common where this increasingly pitiful Third twin was involved - and decided to take mercy upon the startled girl - yet another thing which was becoming irritatingly habitual - by walking into the room as though there were nothing unusual going on, pulling her robe off over her head, and drawing her two-hander to start running through some solo drills. 

The rest followed her lead, and carried on as if they saw nothing amiss in sharing their training room with two unexpected new swordswomen, one a princess, the other a black vestal. If their moves were stiffer, and they worked in silence without their typical intermittent scatter of critique, encouragement, and idle banter, well, Coronabeth had never seen their normal practices, and didn't necessarily know that this was any different, and Gideon was just so happy to have her sword in her hands again, that she couldn't find it in her to care. 

The others would adjust, or they wouldn't. Coronabeth would come clean, or she wouldn't. Gideon had had more than enough of worrying about anyone else; for the first time since she'd been named Reverend Daughter, Gideon let go of all of her responsibilities, cleared her mind of all other concerns, and just enjoyed herself. 

She didn't know how long had passed before she became aware that her throat was burningly dry, and she probably ought to stop for a drink. She sheathed her sword and circled the edge of the room, so as not to get an accidental stab from any of the room's other occupants, making her way around to the little side room and its sink. As she did, she revelled in the tired burn of her muscles, which was just so much more satisfying than the migraines she got from working too hard at her necromancy. After days of failing with the challenge in the facility, and fumbling over the process of learning to speak with her hands, it was pure joy to do something she was actually good at.

Coronabeth slipped into the little room behind her as Gideon was bent unceremoniously over the sink to drink straight from the tap. 

"You're incredible with that sword," Coronabeth said, with something of her old charisma, though there was still a faint tentativeness to it.

"I could say the same to you," Gideon replied, turning around to face Coronabeth and leaning back against the sink. She hadn't gone out of her way to watch, but she couldn't help but notice the princess's proficiency. She added grudging admiration to the list of unwilling positives she felt about this problem of a woman. Whatever the Third's deal was, Gideon knew only that she wanted to be as far away as possible when it all imploded, but from the moment she'd confessed her secret to Gideon, Coronabeth had been a wreck, and Gideon would have had to be as hard-hearted as Crux not feel for her. 

“Your sword is… very _large_ ,” Coronabeth said, infusing her voice with a breathy intensity that Gideon might have found seductive, had she not been getting the increasing feeling that the abandoned twin was only paying attention to her in order to fill an Ianthe-shaped void in her life. 

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t catch me dead twirling around one of those toothpicks. Drop the bullshit, Tridentarius. What do you want?”

The violet eyes staring up into hers through long, golden lashes - a feat Gideon was honestly impressed by, given that Coronabeth was actually taller than her, and so couldn’t really be expected to look at Gideon in any way that could be classed as ‘up’ - widened in shock and hurt. For a moment, it almost looked as though Coronabeth might start crying, until she saw that her threat of crocodile tears was having no affect on Gideon, when she gave up the act. 

Gideon wasn’t a fool. She still remembered how certain of the Ninth congregation had changed overnight, going from casual cruelty towards the ‘cuckoo child’, when they couldn’t simply ignore her altogether, to grovelling obsequiousness when she’d been named Reverend Daughter. Perhaps if she’d never experienced that kind of calculated sycophantry before she’d have fallen for Coronabeth’s games. Instead, all her ploys seemed painfully transparent; she was confident enough with her sister and her cavalier to back her up, but winnow her out from the pack, and that confidence was nothing but a front. Gideon didn’t know who the ‘real’ Coronabeth Tridentarius was - she suspected that even Coronabeth herself didn’t know - but she did know that the sparkling perfect princess persona was all an act.

“Would you... fight me? Babs always goes easy on me, and since he got hurt, he hasn’t wanted to spar at all.”

“Why even _is_ Babs?” Gideon asked, letting loose the question that had been bothering her since the moment she found out that Coronabeth was no necromancer. “You’re handy enough with a sword; why aren’t _you_ Ianthe’s cavalier? I know it’s not exactly the done thing, but since when has the Third cared about propriety?” 

"Our parents wanted a matched set of necromantic heirs," Coronabeth said, with the simple bluntness which came from frequent repetition of a painful fact. Gideon recognised it, because it was the exact tone she herself used when she called herself an orphan. "They call the Third the 'Mouth' of the Emperor. Well, the Emperor's mouth lies."

"That sucks," Gideon said, seeing a reflection of herself in the trapped violet eyes of the Crown Princess of Ida. She wanted to say _'why don't you just come clean'_ , or _'I'd tell them where to stick their stupid lie'_ , but how much had she tolerated on the Ninth, because it was what she'd been told her House needed? She could have forged a shuttle request years ago, gone to join the cohort, or one of the other Houses, but she never had. There was something... addictive, about being needed. She could understand that. She didn't want to understand Coronabeth, but she thought she might. 

Gideon looked frantically for a route out of this conversation. _'That sucks'_ was a feeble response, and she knew it, but what more was there to say? It _did_ suck.

"You don't want to fight me," she said, instead, "my sword would snap yours in half the first time you tried to parry. I cannot understand why cavaliers learn such stupid weapons."

"Then teach me," Corona said, stepping closer, pinning Gideon against the sink. "Show me how to fight like you."

"You've never even seen me fight," Gideon hedged, trying not to feel the heat of Coronabeth's legs against hers, or breathe in her scent. "You don't even know if I'm any good."

"I bet you are though, Gideon. You're a _wonder;_ I don't think there's anything you couldn't do, if you put your mind to it."

Was that an appley undertone to Coronabeth's perfume, or just the smell of Gideon's failures wafting back to her from this morning? She didn't know, but she suddenly wanted to prove herself. Wasn't that why she'd brought her sword out anyway? To do something she was actually good at, for a change?

"Oh, there's plenty I'm terrible at;" Gideon said, blithely, "but I _am_ good with the sword. If you're really serious about learning, then go grab one of the two-handers from the rack on the wall, and let's do this."

***

Coronabeth was remarkably patient with the slow pace Gideon set her; she supposed that the early stages of learning any weapon were fairly similar - stance, and grip, and endless, mind-numbing repetitions of the same basic moves. Coronabeth, at least, had a swordswoman's muscles - she wouldn't need the six months of conditioning Gideon had needed, just to be able to hold her sword out straight without locking her elbows. There were a lot of advantages to not being a necromancer. Gideon expected Coronabeth to get bored, or distracted, or angry with Gideon's corrections and adjustments, but she took it all with equanimity. 

She would have made the perfect pupil - certainly, she was a far better student than Gideon was a teacher - except for two things; the way she insisted on watching Gideon’s face, not her sword, trying to catch her eye when her attention should have been solely on the basic blocks and strikes Gideon was going over with her; and her tendency to lean in, just a little, to Gideon’s hands, when Gideon adjusted her stance or posture. Her attempts at flirtation were unsubtle, and surprisingly unwelcome; Coronabeth seemed to manipulate those around her as automatically as breathing, and even if Gideon could understand why, that didn’t mean she liked being on the receiving end of it.

So when Gideon called a halt to their practice - recognising that Corona was starting to tire - and Corona’s instant response was to strip off her sweat-soaked shirt and loose trousers, until she stood clad in only a chemise and shorts, Gideon merely turned away, under the pretence of retiring to the benches to clean her own sword before putting it away. It was fortunate that she did look away; it meant that no one could see her face when Coronabeth said: “Care to join me for a swim, Gideon?” - though anyone facing even vaguely in her direction could hardly have missed her reflexive shudder.

“Uh, no,” she choked out, adding belatedly, “thanks.”

She shrugged her way back into her robes before sitting on the bench, pulling her hood low over her head. She was sweating herself, and now that she was no longer moving, the cooling sweat felt like ice dripping down her spine. And if the enveloping black robe and deep hood made her seem unapproachable, well, she’d about had her fill of being approached for one day. She settled down to scour away the minor nicks and scratches her blade had picked up over the course of the afternoon, finding comfort in the solitary ritual.


	33. Chapter 33

Dinner that evening was a quiet affair. They didn't talk about theorems, or challenges, which made Gideon suspect everyone of walking on eggshells around her abject failure, which just annoyed her more. Nor did they talk about Gideon and Coronabeth training together, though the two of them got enough looks that Gideon was pretty certain the other cavaliers had told their necromancers about it at the first opportunity.

Gideon didn’t realise how accustomed she’d come to having Coronabeth’s leg pressed up against hers each mealtime, or how often Coronabeth had contrived to let their arms brush as she reached for a drink, or a piece of bread. If Gideon had noticed the contact at all, she’d written it off as the inevitable result of sharing a fairly cosily-proportioned bench, but apparently it was far from inevitable. This evening, Gideon might as well not have existed for all the attention Coronabeth paid her. 

Which begged two very important questions. One - had Coronabeth been flirting with her for nearly two weeks now, and she’d been too oblivious to notice? And two - what had changed?

Well, and a third question. _What did she want to do about it?_

She didn’t know. But she suspected that doing nothing would be a decision all by itself, so when they all got up from the table, and Coronabeth headed for the kitchen, Gideon went with her, Harrow following along silently behind.

They made it through the doors and in the hallway between the kitchen and dining room, out of sight and hearing of the other Houses, before Coronabeth disappeared into the kitchens. Raising her voice slightly so that the princess would hear her from down the hallway, Gideon said: “Want to tell me what’s wrong?”

Coronabeth jumped; apparently she hadn’t realised she wasn’t alone. When she saw Gideon and Harrow, her face twisted into a scowl and she stalked back down the corridor until she stood so uncomfortably close to Gideon that Gideon had to raise a cautionary hand to Harrow before she could get violent.

“If you don’t like me, that’s fine. You didn’t have to be so rude about it.” Corona snapped.

“Woah, okay, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I thought we were having a good time, you know, but when I stripped down to go swimming, you looked like you were about to throw up.”

“That wasn’t anything to do with your body, princess. I just, uh, kind of have a thing about swimming. Trust me - no matter what the magazines might tell you, the Ninth suffers from a serious shortage of sexy nuns. You’re basically the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”

“You really mean that?” Coronabeth said, staring so intently that Gideon almost forgot that she was wearing her sunglasses, and Coronabeth couldn’t actually see her eyes. _Slow down, Nonagesimus, slow down,_ Gideon cautioned herself - probably the desire in those wide violet eyes was in response to the sight of her own beautiful reflection in Gideon’s mirrored lenses.

Before Gideon could reply, Coronabeth leaned in, pinning Gideon against the wall, and - _holy shit_ \- kissed Gideon’s frozen-with-shock lips with her own, far more fluent ones. For a moment, Gideon’s brain could only passively take in what was happening with no hope of reacting; she felt the softness of Coronabeth’s lips, the heat where their bodies were pressed together, set against the cool stone of the wall at her back, and Harrow’s explosive exhale, like she’d been punched in the gut.

_Harrow…._

With some difficulty, and against the vehement protest of the cocktail of hormones currently coursing through her system, Gideon pushed Coronabeth away, and took a deep breath, looking anywhere except the grey smudge of paint on the princess’ lips as she spoke.

“One thing you should know about me, if we’re going to be friends;” Gideon said, pleased that her voice was calm and level, “the only thing I hate more than swimming, is being manipulated.”

Gideon turned to leave, not waiting to see how Corona would react to that. She paused, halfway through the doors, calling breezily over her shoulder: “Besides, necromancers aren’t allowed to marry between Houses, are we?” Before making her way briskly back to the Ninth quarters, Harrow a silent, brooding presence at her back.

Gideon was in no mood to socialise with another living - or unliving - soul. As soon as they were safely behind the closed doors to the Ninth’s suite of rooms, Gideon said: “I’m tired. I’m going to hop in the sonic, and then get an early night.”

And then, with a haste that could more accurately be referred to as fleeing, Gideon locked herself in the bathroom. It took her less than five minutes to clean the paint from her face, throw her dirty clothes in the laundry basket, and stand in the sonic until she felt clean.

It took her another five minutes of staring into the mirror, dumbfounded, to establish that her reflection looked no different than it had that morning. It had been stupid to think that kissed lips would be visibly different, but - barring the hectic flush, high in her cheeks - the face that stared back at her was unchanged. 

And then - it took only a moment of panic, standing by the closed autodoor, to realise that she’d rushed into the bathroom in such a frantic hurry that she hadn’t brought any spare clothes to change into. She considered fishing her dirty robes out of the basket and putting them back on, but her skin felt flushed, oversensitive, and she cringed away from the idea. She put her ear to the door, trying to tell if Harrow was still in the room on the other side, but, hearing nothing, she opted to wrap herself in one of the fluffy white towels draped on rails around the room. 

Feeling barely less than naked, Gideon took a deep breath, and triggered the autodoor, planning to rush over to her trunk to grab a fresh robe. Instead, she ran straight into Harrow, who was waiting outside the door, nearly knocking her over. Automatically, Gideon let go of her towel to put her arms around her cavalier to keep her from falling. 

For the third time that day, Gideon found herself pressed up against a distractingly-warm body, and for the third time that day, she had not the faintest clue what to do about it. Harrow appeared frozen with shock, her eyes wide, lips slightly parted, and Gideon couldn’t let herself think about the differences between the lean, almost dainty body in her arms, and Coronabeth’s lush softness; no, Gideon needed every available braincell to address the issue of how to let go of Harrow without losing the towel that was the only thing preserving what little remained of her modesty. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she felt one end come loose, totally exposing the back of her body; the other end was pinned between their bodies, but would fall to the floor the instant they were no longer touching.

“Harrow,” Gideon said, mortified to find that she couldn’t manage more than a choked whisper. “I need you to do something very important.”

“No,” was Harrow’s instant response, and her eyes were even wider, whites showing all the way around her irises.

“I’m going to let go of you, and I need you to not move.” 

“No!” Harrow said again, sounding despairing. She looked like an animal caught in a trap, gearing up to gnaw off its own limb just to escape. Gideon did her best not to feel hurt at Harrow’s utter horror at seeing - _and, uh, feeling_ \- her while insufficiently clothed. She knew that Harrow didn’t like her. She knew that Harrow _hated_ her, but until that moment she’d still been able to maintain the illusion that Harrow could at least appreciate how objectively hot Gideon was. 

_Apparently not._

“Just long enough for me to grab my towel, okay?” Gideon tried to keep her voice level, using the same calm monotone she used with the oldest penitents when their wits wandered with age. “Otherwise this is going to get a whole lot more awkward for both of us.”

There was no comprehension in Harrow’s scared-animal eyes. 

“Can you do this for me?”

Still no answer.

“I need a yes.”

Slowly, Harrow nodded. 

Just as slowly, afraid that any sudden movement would spook her suddenly-skittish cavalier, Gideon let go with one arm, and then, when Harrow showed no sign of bolting, the other. She pulled the towel tightly around herself, and then stepped back, not looking Harrow in the face as her cavalier instantly skirted around her and into the bathroom Gideon had just vacated, giving her as wide a berth as she could in the doorway. 

Feeling about as weary as she had in her whole life, Gideon waited until the autodoor was firmly sealed between them, before pulling on a robe and curling up in bed. She worried that the day’s many stresses would prey on her thoughts, keeping her awake, but for once her mind was merciful; she fell asleep to the distant sound of running water, and if she dreamed, she didn’t remember it

***

The next morning proceeded exactly as the dozen before. If they didn’t speak to each other on the way to breakfast, well, that wasn’t precisely unusual. If Harrow had her hood drawn low, and her head down, hiding her face, if she followed maybe just a half-step further back than strict protocol would dictate… Gideon only had to think of how much worse it could have been.

Breakfast was tense. Coronabeth, undeterred by the events of the day before, sat extra close to Gideon’s side, seeming to regard Gideon’s personal space as territory in need of conquering. That would have been less of an issue if each advance on Coronabeth’s part didn’t nudge Gideon ever closer to Harrow, who was, in turn, doing her utmost to stay as far away from Gideon as was practical. Gideon half expected poor Isaac to end up shuffled off the other end of the bench entirely before the meal was finished.

Gideon ate quickly, mostly because with her mouth full, no one could expect her to talk. This came with the unfortunate consequence that she finished eating long before anyone else, and ended up sipping at cup after cup of the boiled-leaf water they brought out each morning, making her feel jittery, and faintly sloshy.

As the others gradually finished their own breakfasts, Gideon realised that she fundamentally could not handle another morning in that damn laboratory, and, in fact, if she ever had to look at another apple she would start screaming and just never stop. 

“Why don’t we try something different today?” She said, eventually. “I could use a break from wards - I guess they aren’t quite my forte? How about we each go take a look at one of the other challenges, and then we can compare notes over lunch, and decide which one we want to tackle next? Harrow and I will take lab two, someone else can take lab three, and so on.”

The other Houses agreed to this plan fairly readily; Gideon guessed that they were probably getting as sick as she was of the same old challenge, though they’d been too polite to say it. And at least this way, there’d be less opportunity for the other Houses to pick up on things being even tenser than usual between the Ninth adept and her cavalier.


	34. Chapter 34

So, when they got to the big nonagonal room at the centre of the facility, rather than all turning down the hallway to LABORATORY ONE-THREE as they had each morning for the last couple of weeks, the Fourth and Fifth Houses took the next corridor along to LABORATORY FOUR-SIX instead, and Camilla and Palamedes peeled off a few feet along the hallway, ducking into LABORATORY THREE, leaving Gideon and Harrow to enter the door marked LABORATORY TWO alone. 

The little foyer beyond was cupboard sized, like the other two she’d seen. On the door ahead, was a dilapidated folder behind a piece of plex, with a scribbled and pale title in a faded, haphazard hand: TRANSFERENCE/WINNOWING. DATACENTER.

Above the sterile metal door was the more familiar sight of a mounted skull, probably once painted red but now tarry brown. It had lost its jaw at some point, and seemed all front teeth. It reminded her, with a pang, of Ortus, whose mother generally contrived to paint him in the Mouthless Skull, in a vain attempt to conceal the sad droop of his jawline. Gideon wondered for the first time since arriving at Canaan House what was happening on the Ninth in her absence. Was Ortus through with whatever punishment he’d been set for allowing Harrow to switch places with him? She hoped he was. 

Gideon pushed through the door, and they both went on to the next room. This room - more spacious, more elongated - gave the distinct impression of having been ransacked. It was ringed with broad metal desks, and the walls were pockmarked with empty electrical sockets. There were shelves and shelves that must once have contained books and files and folders, but now only contained a lot of dust; there were discoloured places on the walls where things must have been tacked up and had since been taken down. It was a naked and empty room. One wall was windowed all along its length to let you see into the chamber ahead, and that wall had a door in it marked with two things: one, a sign on the front saying RESPONSE, and two, a little plaque on the top marked OCCUPIED. This had a bleary glow of a green light next to it, indicating that Response was probably not occupied. Gideon looked through to Response - a bleak, featureless chamber, characterised by only by a couple of vents on the far side of the square. 

The other wall - filled with brackets to prop up books that had long since been removed - had a door too, and this one was labelled: IMAGING. The Imaging door had the same plaque as Response, but with a little red light instead. Gideon tried the door marked Response, as Harrow disappeared into Imaging. At first the door didn’t seem to be opening, but then a moment later, the door slid into a recess in the wall. Gideon walked inside and…

 _She was inside a maelstrom. Sensations tugged at her until she felt they’d tear her apart; the pounding of her too-fast heartbeat, the sigh of her breath. The ever-present screaming turmoil within her, which felt like she’d swallowed her two-hundred souls whole and they were clawing their way out of her. Her eyes burned from too much weeping and too little sleep; the air blowing from the vent in the ceiling was cold, and she felt her skin prickle, but she automatically suppressed a shiver -_ can’t show any weakness _. The gnawing emptiness in her stomach didn’t bother her any more, hadn’t for years. It was almost a friend by now; she felt like she she had to hollow herself out, chip away at every part of herself until she became no more than a vessel for the deaths she held; every mouthful she denied herself was only her fit and proper penance for her failure. And of course, there is the pain, the burning, tearing pain of the thick knots of scar tissue on her back, healed wrong, too tight, but that’s okay, because she deserves the pain. She deserves to suffer each time she moves, each time she breathes, each time she raises her sword…_

And Gideon was on the floor, hands wet with her own blood, and someone was screaming over the intercom. _Harrow_ was screaming. Gideon didn’t stop to think, she didn’t stop to consider why she was bleeding, or how badly she might be hurt. _Harrow was screaming._

She was on her feet and back in the main room so quickly that she ran straight into Harrow, before she could stop, the second time in as many days, only this time, they didn’t both remain upright. It was only when she found herself on the floor again, that she remembered that she was bleeding. She turned her head, suddenly dizzy, and the last thing she saw before she passed out was the thick trail of her blood, leading back to RESPONSE.

***

Consciousness found her, before she found her body. She heard something; Harrow’s voice saying ' _you_ dullard _, you_ imbecile _, you_ fool’ _,_ all the old contempt of the Ninth House back and fresh, as though she were there again. Harrow never wasted an opportunity to point out Gideon’s shortcomings. 

Harrow had always mastered everything first, despite being younger. She had been the first to speak, the first to write in wobbling block letters _NONAGESIMUS,_ back when the name had still been hers, the first to raise… the memory slipped away before Gideon could really grasp it, pushed away by growing awareness of her own body.

The first thing she felt was the cold. She was shivering, violently, freezing everywhere except for a sticky, sickly heat low across her belly. Then the pain hit. Pain, and a _wrongness._ Gideon was no stranger to pain, but this was unlike anything she’d ever felt. She put her hands to her stomach, and found another pair of hands already there, trying to stem the hot rush of blood. 

The next interminable stretch of time passed in a blur of pain. Eventually there were more people there, more voices, and hands underneath her, lifting her into the air, which Gideon noticed only because each tiny shift caused an explosion of tearing, ripping agony.

After what felt like centuries, other details began to seep in to where her mind was curled like a suffering animal in a trap. Words…

“... story doesn’t match up.” A voice she didn’t recognise.

Another impossibly long stretch of blackness, and the agony which should surely have killed her long since.

“...refuse to leave my adept....” This voice she did recognise; it was Harrow’s. She wanted to respond, but finding her body in all this awful blackness would mean getting closer to the pain her mind had fled, and she couldn’t make herself do it.

The blackness smothered her again, and the voice drifted away, replaced some time later by another.

“Gideon?” This was… Dulcinea? Gideon could hardly fail to recognise the lilting tone, but Dulcinea hadn’t been there. Where was she? How much time had passed? “Gideon, oh, no no no. Stay awake; hold on. Don’t die. It’s very easy to die, Gideon… you just let it happen. It’s so much worse when it doesn’t, but come on, chicken. Not right now, and not yet.” 

Then Abigail. “It’s going to be okay…”

This last, she thoroughly disbelieved. How could anything be said to be okay, when her abdomen was a stretch of fire, and magma was leeching into her veins, until her whole body was consumed, and there was only the blaze of pain, and the empty blackness which offered relief, but at a price which terrified her?

Then the nightmares came for her, with the vivid realism of fever-dreams. Harrow held a broken tibia, the end splintered into sharp points. She thrust it into Gideon’s stomach, again, and again, until the bone came away bloody, and Gideon reached for the well of thanergy within her, to crumble the tibia away to dust, but there was nothing there. She was empty, and powerless, and Harrow brought the improvised weapon down again as everything dropped away.

Now, she and Harrow stood with a skeleton construct between them. The construct advanced on Harrow, who was cringing away, pleading with Gideon to make it stop in a way that a more-rational Gideon would have never found believable. Harrow fought her own battles. But this Harrow was defenceless against the construct that approached her, and Gideon wasn’t controlling it, couldn’t hold it back as it took step after menacing step towards her cavalier. One skeletal arm formed into a blade, almost a sword, and ran Harrow through, but Gideon felt the pain in her own stomach, and when she put her hands to her middle, they came away bloody, and Harrow was laughing.

Somewhere in amongst all of this, something got through to her, a soothing hand on her forehead, which was then replaced by a cool wet cloth. A short, sharp pain in the back of her hand fought briefly through the overwhelming agony to demand her attention, before dying away as a chill leeched up her arm, as though ice-water ran in her veins.

And then there was nothing.


	35. Chapter 35

Some timeless eternity later, she almost surfaced - she couldn’t open her eyes, but when she spoke, she thought that she spoke in truth, and not just in dream.

“Harrow?” And she must have spoken the words aloud, because what dreaming mind could reproduce so perfectly the awful rasp, the painful scratch of a throat dry from screaming?

“See?” Snapped an unfamiliar voice in a clipped alto. “She’s as good as confirmed it, Master Warden. I insist that you release the cavalier into our custody. We will contact the cohort, and see that she is dealt with appropriately.”

“I shall do no such thing, Captain.” This voice, after a moment, Gideon recognised. Palamedes. “If all the Second House are as quick to jump to conclusions as you are, then it would be frankly unethical of me to trust you with the care of so much as a pet rock. I don’t see how you can say definitively that a single word constitutes an accusation, when almost certainly the first thought on any adept’s mind at a time like this must be their cavalier?”

“You said yourself, the circumstances were suspicious.”

“Suspicious, yes! Possibly even incriminatory, but far from incontrovertible proof. The decision has already been made…”

“A decision we were not consulted on.”

“A decision we did not need to consult you on, because the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Houses together hold the majority, even if you do somehow manage to get the Eighth to care long enough to venture an opinion.”

“The Third…”

“Are split. And again, the point is moot, given that we still hold the majority. We aren’t nearly as reckless and undisciplined as you seem to assume, Captain. She won’t be left unattended, and nor will the cavalier be allowed in to see her without adequate supervision. When she is well enough…”

“Harrow?” Gideon tried again, managing to raise her voice slightly louder this time, though the movement of her diaphragm made her feel like she’d swallowed acid and it was eating away at her insides.

“Master Warden, your _duty_...” the woman who was presumably the Second House adept spoke over Gideon, and she was worried that she hadn’t been heard, until Palamedes cut her off.

“My duty is to my patient, who is awake, though she really shouldn’t be, which means I need you to leave.” Gideon almost didn’t recognise Sextus’ voice; his typically mild and affable tone now cut like steel. “Cam, if you would show the Captain out?”

“Yes, Warden.” 

“Gideon,” Palamedes’ voice was suddenly much softer, and came from much closer, “don’t try to move. How are you feeling?”

“Harrow?” she tried again, and inasmuch as her voice could carry a tone at all, beyond pained, in its current state, she tried to convey the urgency of her request.

“She’s right outside. She’s fine.”

“She screamed,” Gideon managed.

“For help. _She_ is fine, but I’m afraid that you have been quite gravely injured. The best thing you can do right now is stay still and try to rest. Camilla and I put a lot of effort into those stitches, so I won’t have you pulling them.” Then, slightly louder, clearly not directed at Gideon, “You should probably fetch her, I don’t think our patient will settle without her cavalier.”

“On it,” came the level voice of Camilla Hect.

There were footsteps, a sudden lance of light which was painful even with her eyes closed, and then.

“Griddle?” The voice was measured, unemotional, but unmistakably Harrow, and though to someone who didn’t know Harrow as well as Gideon did, she was still every inch the implacable Ninth cavalier, her use of the childhood nickname spoke volumes. Even if Gideon had possessed sufficient capacity for complex thought as to have been able to consider the possibility, she knew, the instant that Harrow called her ‘Griddle’, it hadn’t been Harrow who’d done this to her. Her memories were muddled and incoherent, and really, she didn’t have a clue what had happened, but she knew that Harrow hadn’t injured her.

With Harrow’s presence - and innocence - assured, the panic which had been all that kept Gideon conscious faded, and with it, Gideon herself faded, and slipped back into the blackness.

***

The next time she woke, she felt better, more coherent. She was even able to open her eyes enough to see Dulcinea sat by her bedside, though she couldn't summon the strength to move her head and look around the room, to see if anyone else was present.

"Well hello there." Dulcinea let out a delighted, bubbling chuckle. "You're awake. I must say, Reverend Daughter, this is quite the new experience for me. I'm far more used to being the one in the bed, you know."

"Is Harrow...?" Gideon wasn't sure what question she was really asking, but knew that it was the most important thing in the world in that moment. Harrow had been there. She was certain Harrow had been there, in reality, not just another fever dream. But then, all her dreams had been of Harrow, and surely, no matter how much Harrow hated Gideon, the Ninth House cavalier would be there to guard her necromancer? What if it had been a dream, and Harrow had been hurt too... or worse...

"She’s moved into the suite across the hall. They won't let her in here unless there's another cavalier to keep watch, and Pro is running errands for me." Now, Dulcinea leaned in, conspiratorially. "They all think that she's the one who stabbed you, you know. But they can't get their stories to match up any better than hers does. It's quite the mystery. I really _ought_ to call for the Sixth if you’re awake,” she pouted prettily, “but, oh, I would just _love_ to be the first one to find out the truth. Would you tell me what happened, Gideon?"

Gideon tried to think back, through the morass of nightmares and hallucinations to something which felt so much less real than the dreams of her fevered brain. 

"I... don't know." she said at last, pleased to find that the effort of speaking caused only a bearable agony. "We were down in the facility, through the hatch in the basement. I don't know if you..."

"Oh," said Dulcinea, "I've been down there. Exciting, isn't it?"

"Can't say it's my favourite place in the world right now, if I'm being honest. We were in one of the laboratories, lab two, and there's a couple of doors. Harrow went through one, and as soon as she did, the other door opened. I went in, and... I don't know what happened next, really. It was all a blur, but I heard Harrow screaming, and so I turned around and ran to see what was wrong. But I was already hurt, and she wasn't in the room with me when it happened - it must have been part of the test. Harrow didn't do this - they don't have to keep her out."

“Well, I must say I’m glad to have that much settled. If we can’t trust our cavaliers, who can we trust?”

“Don’t go in there,” Gideon said, gripped with sudden urgency.

“Into the room where you got stabbed? It’s so sweet of you to worry about me, but you needn’t.”

“Into the facility at all. I don’t…” she ground to a halt, not sure what she was trying to say. Gideon was still very fuzzy-headed, and couldn’t articulate the horror the thought of the facility instilled in her, even beyond having been injured. Gideon had never been particularly devout; she didn’t think faith was actually a necessary thing, when God was out there, chilling on a cohort flagship. God was God, that was that, no further thought required. She’d thought even less about the necrosaints, God’s Fingers and Gestures, even after receiving the invitation to come and try her hand at, well, becoming a Hand.

But, ever since seeing the couple of theorem stones she’d gained access to, and learning the truth about the origins of Teacher, and Bob, and Alexis, and all the other occupants of Canaan House, something had soured in the pit of her. God and his saints had gone from being a distant irrelevance to something immediate and horrific. The more she learned in this cursed House, the less she wanted to know. 

“... I don’t think they were good people, the ones that made it.” Gideon finished at last. It was the least of what she wanted to say, a half-hearted scratch at the surface. Dulcinea regarded her with an indecipherable expression.

“What makes you say that?”

“Don’t you ever wonder what they actually did here? What lines they might have crossed, or what means they might have justified to get to the end they were looking for? Why all the mystery? If there wasn’t something terrible, if the price wasn’t unimaginably high, then surely they’d just tell us what to do?” 

The more she spoke, the more it spilled out of her; half-formed suspicions she’d buried, almost since getting the letter. There was too much secrecy, and if there was one thing she knew, it was how bad secrets could be. She felt like she was following a trail of breadcrumbs, and only someone with a frightening hunger, only someone willing to push through thorns and kill for the tiniest morsel, was capable of following the trail to its end. To get even so close as she had to understanding - and understanding was something she groped at only blindly, a knife shrouded in so many layers of cloth that the edge could not bite - she felt sullied, tainted, as though a purer mind than hers would not be capable of considering the possibilities that haunted her.

She’d never in a myriad have imagined that the Ninth, with its grubby assortment of atrocities would come to seem like a haven of safety and solace, but it had. She wanted to go home. She couldn’t go home. 

Dulcinea considered her for a long moment, and her eyes were so deep, so old, so violently blue that the old fear rose up in her. Those eyes were pools she could drown in; she could feel the smothering press of water all around her, and she wanted to panic, but it was only her own sweat that slicked her skin, and she smelled only the sour tang of sickness and unwashed sheets. 

“But isn’t it justified?” Dulcinea asked, and her voice was airy, as though they discussed some abstract philosophical conundrum, but those eyes pinned Gideon down like lead weights, like a blade in her stomach. “We are here at the behest of God, the Lord over the River, the King Undying, Prince of the Nine Resurrections. After everything He paid to bring the Nine Houses back, what price is too high to pay, to serve Him? Isn’t it all justified?”

 _No_. Gideon thought

“Why do you want to be a lyctor?” Gideon asked, instead of answering, unable to bear the weight of that ancient gaze upon her.

“I didn’t want to die.” Dulcinea said simply, still looking at Gideon, those eyes still demanding an answer. 

“Didn’t?” Dulcinea’s eyes softened, saddened, became young again, and lost, and unbearably fragile, and Gideon knew that she understood. Maybe not everything. Maybe not even as much as Gideon herself understood, but enough to know that any secrets held here were a curse, not a blessing, and that sainthood was a sacrament steeped in blood. Gideon was not the only one who would not, could not, take her place at the Emperor’s side. 

If Dulcinea replied, Gideon didn’t hear it. The blackness came for her again, and she slept.


	36. Chapter 36

When Gideon woke again, she felt more coherent, more clear-headed. She wasn't sure whether her fever had finally broken, or whether the shouting in the room around her had caused enough of an adrenaline surge to bring her to full alertness in spite of it. 

"When was the last time you saw him, Princess?" This was Palamedes' voice, and it was what Gideon finally managed to focus on; his tone level and moderate amongst the bedlam.

"I don't know," the voice was distorted with tears, but Gideon was fairly certain this was Coronabeth.

"It isn't a difficult question," This voice Gideon recognised, after a moment, as Marta the Second. "No one has seen Naberius since his duel with the Ninth, aside from yourself, and presumably your sister, who - it seems - didn't deem the situation important enough to be here."

"I don't know. A few days maybe? I thought he was just with Ianthe."

"And when did you last speak to your sister?"

"Ianthe isn't dead!" Corona snapped, misery shading into anger. “I saw her this morning.”

"No one is suggesting that she is," Palamedes said gently, "there was only one body found in the incinerator, and by all accounts, it appears to be Naberius'. But it would help us to get a better idea of what might have happened if we can account for everyone's movements."

"I still say we need to question the Ninth again," came a clipped voice with the characteristic accent of Trentham. This voice sounded younger; presumably this was Marta's adept, Judith.

"Question me about what?" Gideon asked. She didn't recall having answered any questions previously, and worried what she might have said while unguarded and careless with fever, but the reply put her mind at ease on that front, even as it gave her a whole host of new concerns.

"The Ninth _cavalier_ ," Judith said, apparently in response to Gideon's interjection, but when Gideon managed to open her eyes enough to look at the crowd which had gathered in her bedroom, Judith was still looking at Palamedes, apparently considering Gideon a non-entity, for the purposes of this conversation. This stung, a little, but Gideon had to admit she'd hardly been in any condition to have been murdering anyone. 

Without Judith’s scrutiny upon her, Gideon was free to look around the room. Palamedes and Captain Deuteros were stood facing each other, barely a foot apart, scowling at each other in a way which indicated that this argument had been going on for some time. Their respective cavaliers stood behind them, and each had adopted an air of disinterested neutrality, though Camilla’s was more believable. Coronabeth sat on a couch which must have been dragged through from the next room. She was crying, and Dulcinea sat next to her, propped up with pillows, gently stroking the weeping twin’s shoulder in a vain attempt to soothe her sobbing.

To Gideon’s dismay, the mayonnaise uncle from the Eighth was also there, with his miserable, jaundiced cavalier in tow. They hadn’t spoken yet, but the scowl on Silas’ face was so profoundly hateful that he looked more like Crux than any weedy, bleached sixteen-year-old had any right to.

The only ones missing were the Fourth and the Fifth - Gideon wasn’t surprised that Abigail and Magnus had opted to spare the teens this particular shitshow - Ianthe Tridentarius, and Harrow.

Well, and Naberius Tern.

"We still don't have a satisfactory explanation..." Judith was saying.

"Captain, I refuse to go over this again. As Teacher has repeatedly pointed out, the facility is _dangerous_ ; we cannot assume that any injuries sustained there are automatically foul play..."

“Naberius’ body was found in the incinerator, not in the facility.”

“But the Reverend Daughter _was_ injured in the facility. You have circumstantial evidence at best that Harrowhark the Ninth was in any way responsible -”

“She wasn’t,” insisted Gideon.

“And nothing at all to link Gideon’s injury to Tern’s death.” Palamedes continued. “Nothing I’ve seen indicates any similarities, and the Ninth’s conduct has been beyond reproach in the time I’ve spent with them.”

"And that's another thing.” Judith snapped, “I find it highly suspect that you have been collaborating with the Fifth and Ninth Houses, Master Warden, without sharing your findings equally amongst the other Houses. As keeper of the Library, your business is in preserving, collating, and disseminating information; it is not your job to decide who should be deemed fit to possess that information! Whatever historical divides may have existed between our Houses..."

"Divides? Surely not..." Palamedes muttered to himself, as Judith continued talking over him.

"... You have no right to have kept the existence of the Facility from us."

"Kept it from you? Since when have the Second needed anyone to hold their hands - or been willing to entertain anyone else’s opinion? You were given the same opportunities as we all were. How dare you set yourself up as judge, jury, and executioner in this matter when you haven’t even been paying attention to the slightest thing which has been going on?”

“Well, you have my attention now. We have one person dead, and another gravely injured; the community needs this over and done with.” Judith said, with all the self-righteous officiousness that Gideon typically associated with the Eighth. “It needs someone who can take command, end this, and send everyone who remains back in one piece. Will you consider working with me?”

“No,” said Palamedes.

“I am not asking you for any personal gain; I’m asking you to support order and stability for the Houses.”

“Even if I ascribed to the notion that militarily-imposed order and stability are goals worth pursuing, which I don’t, I can’t be bribed with moral platitudes. My conscience doesn’t permit me to help _anyone_ do what we have all embarked upon.”

“But the Fifth…” Judith sounded as though she suspected Palamedes of bullshitting.

“You really _haven’t_ been paying attention, have you? Lord help the cohort if they ever recruit _you_ for the intelligence services. Since Gideon’s injury, the Fourth and Fifth Houses have discontinued their studies into the facility.”

“You don’t understand-”

Palamedes said savagely, “Captain, God help you when _you_ understand. My only consolation is that you won’t be able to put any responsibility on my head. Regardless, we’re getting off-track. Unless you provide me with some evidence implicating the Ninth in Tern’s death -”

Now, the Eighth adept spoke for the first time since Gideon had woken. “The Ninth House is a House of broken promises, the bad seeds of a furtive crop. I do not know why the Emperor suffered that shadow of a House, that mockery of his name. A house that would keep lamps lit for a grave that was meant to pass into darkness is a House that would kill indiscriminately.”

“Impressively portentous, but lacking in substance.” Palamedes said, drily. “Does anyone have any evidence besides petty bigotry?”

“I still say-” Silas started speaking, but Dulcinea, of all people, cut him off.

“Oh, sit on it,” she said, snappishly, “I know all about the Eighth House, Master Silas Octakiseron. The Emperor himself may not have intended the Ninth, but he never spoke a word against it. He _did_ say that Eighth House siphoning was the most dangerous thing any House had ever thought up, and ought only to be done with the siphoner in cuffs.”

Octakiseron rounded on Dulcinea, looking for a moment as though he would strike her; she met his gaze unflinchingly, and after a long, tense, moment, the Eighth swept from the room.

There was a moment of silence, and then Judith spoke again. “Whatever your personal feelings, Master Warden…”

“Captain,” he responded, a warning note in his voice, “I will not stand by and let you harass that poor girl any further. Did she say anything, _anything,_ when you interrogated her to give you cause to think she could be involved in Tern’s death?”

“She was uncooperatively reticent…”

“Harrowhark is a Black Vestal, and a cavalier you were keeping from her necromancer; you expected her to be chatty?”

“Nonetheless, Master Warden, let me be very clear; there is a murderer among us. I shall be advising everyone not to walk the halls alone.” This last was directed at Dulcinea, whose cavalier was nowhere in evidence. 

“I’m already dying, Captain,” Dulcinea said with an unsettling breeziness. Gideon was firmly of the opinion that no one should speak so dispassionately about their own demise, but she had to acknowledge that the frail necromancer had a point. “What can anyone do to me now?”

With clear frustration at the wilful obstinance of all present, Judith rounded on Palamedes one final time. “And I will hold you _personally_ responsible if that cavalier is left alone to finish what she started.”

“We can agree on that much,” Sextus sighed, “you can rest assured I’ll be the first one to blame myself if anything happens to Gideon while she’s under my care. It pains me to say it, but I’ll agree to keeping them separate for now.”

With a curt nod, Deuteros turned sharply and left the room, her cavalier following behind.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Gideon asked, incredulous that this decision had been made over her head, and no one had concerned themselves with asking her opinion. If she wasn’t exhausted just by the effort of staying conscious and following the thread of the conversation, she’d have more than a few choice words to say.

“Until you’re well enough to defend yourself, I’m afraid you don’t.” Palamedes said, not unkindly, but in a tone that brooked no disagreement. 

With the room less crowded now, Gideon was struggling to keep her eyes open. Coronabeth was still weeping, gently - had continued weeping unabated throughout the whole argument. Now, another sound cut through the sobs; a harsh, wet, awful-sounding cough. Gideon levered her eyes open long enough to see that, where Dulcinea had been comforting Coronabeth, now the roles had been switched, and the Third princess was holding Dulcinea steady as she proceeded to messily expel a thick, blood-streaked gobbet of mucus into the handkerchief she held. The coughing continued so long that Gideon worried that Dulcinea might suffocate, but eventually she took a long, ragged breath, and sagged back into Coronabeth’s arms.

“Princess,” Palamedes said, moving over to the couch where the two women sat, “I hate to ask anything of you at a time like this, but would you keep our patient company while Cam and I take Duchess Septimus back to her rooms? I believe she needs to rest.”

“Of course,” Coronabeth sniffled. 

With exquisite care, Dulcinea was helped to her feet, and half-carried from the room, leaving Gideon and Coronabeth alone.


	37. Chapter 37

Coronabeth's grief, as with so much of her, had bloomed under the attention of a room full of people, and now dissipated with only one observer, and an ambiguously conscious one at that. Though she was still clearly in the grip of some powerful emotion, it no longer appeared to be anything so uncomplicated as sadness. Was she wondering whether Tern’s death would finally give her the opportunity to come clean? Gideon wondered again at the life which had made the princess grow up in such a way, wondered whether there was anyone there at all under the endless performance. 

Unsurprisingly, bereft of better company - or audience - Coronabeth rose from her couch across the room and came to sit in the chair by Gideon's bed. Gideon wondered for a moment if Corona would try to take her hand, or worse still, try to kiss her again, but Gideon was an obstacle course of bandages, tubes, and needles, and if the princess had been considering it, she gave up on the notion. 

Coronabeth was clearly expecting Gideon to do something, be it question, accuse, or console. The contrary streak which the princess of Ida always brought out in her kept Gideon silent, face carefully neutral. Gideon wanted to see what Corona would do if Gideon gave her no cue as to what emotion she was expected to perform. Just as Gideon thought that she'd fall back into sleep before getting an answer, Coronabeth spoke.

"They all think it was Harrow, you know."

"It wasn't," Gideon said, hoping that her faith in her cavalier was not misplaced. "She wouldn't do that."

"But, what if he attacked her first? What if it was self-defence? He was very angry after she beat him in the duel. Tried to claim she'd cheated, even though we were all there, and we all saw it." Gideon felt a weary irritation. She could believe that Naberius might have tried to bait Harrow into a rematch, but Coronabeth's suggestion didn't ring true to her; in spite of Gideon's best efforts, Naberius hadn't been well enough to leave the Third's quarters since the duel - surely he wouldn't try to force another fight until he was back to full strength?

And besides, she couldn't claim to know Harrow, when Harrow went to such extraordinary lengths to avoid being known. She couldn't claim to understand her own feelings about Harrow. That didn't mean she'd tolerate anyone else trying to tell her what to think, or how to feel. However little she might understand Harrow, she was certain that Coronabeth understood less.

"If Harrow did it, she wouldn't have tossed him in the incinerator and tried to cover it up. She would have come clean. Where is she?"

"They moved her to the set of rooms across the hall after you were injured. But you don’t need to worry about her; I think the Fourth and Fifth have moved their things to the same suite, though it’s anyone’s guess whether it’s because they think she’d genuinely appreciate the company -” _Doubtful,_ Gideon thought, though it was easier to picture it than it would have been, a month ago. She could almost see Harrow being so steamrollered by Jeannemary’s relentless enthusiasm as to submit to such indignities as slumber parties. “- or because the Second would probably find some dungeon to drag her off to if they thought they could catch her on her own”

“They really have it in for her?”

“Well, no offense, but none of us know either of you. And the Ninth does have something of a reputation… You should have seen it though, when Judith accused her; I thought she was going to challenge the Second on the spot. She didn't shout, or crash about the place; she was so quiet you could barely hear her, and so still she might have been a statue carved from obsidian, but it felt like the temperature dropped about ten degrees. Well, and Judith has been an absolute cad about it all, and I'm not at all sorry that I pantsed her when we were eight."

"Do you know everyone from the other Houses?" Gideon wondered out loud. She couldn't see the uptight Second adept choosing to spend time with dilettantes from the Third of her own free will, but Corona spoke of her with easy familiarity. Gideon was more and more coming to realise that the Ninth's isolation was self-imposed and probably foolish. If even the Second and Third Houses could be friendly, then what point was there in keeping the other Houses at arms' length.

"Most of them. The Eighth keep to themselves, which is for the best, really. I can't see them appreciating the sorts of soirees we throw on the Third. But I’ve met everyone else before, at least briefly, barring yourselves from the Ninth. Well, and Duchess Septimus; she’s always been too ill to go off-planet, but she declines our invitations with such wit that we keep sending them, just to read her responses. I was sort of hoping to spend more time with her, when I found out she’d be here, but nothing turned out like I thought it would.” 

“I don’t think any of us expected this.”

“And Ianthe doesn’t even _care!”_ This last was close to a wail. “When she found out that Babs was dead, she seemed more annoyed that he wouldn’t be there to help her with whatever it is she’s doing in that horrid basement. I said…”

Corona took a deep breath, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I said _I_ could be her cavalier, that I could help her just as well as Babs could. She just laughed at me. I thought that _now_ she’d need me, but she laughed, and said she’d take care of things, like she always did, and I didn’t have to worry. Worry! I’m not worried. I’m _alone._ ”

At this, Coronabeth again succumbed to tears.

Gideon closed her eyes against a grief which seemed both utterly genuine and inexplicably wrong to her. Perhaps the strangeness was only that, in her years of sitting vigil beside deathbed after deathbed, Gideon had never known anyone but herself to shed tears over the dead.

***

She’d only meant to close her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again, she had the inexplicable conviction that some great span of time had passed; perhaps a day, perhaps a year. Bright daylight no longer shone around the edges of the curtained windows, and the room was filled with the patter of heavy rain - a sound which had so confused Gideon the first time she’d heard it, but had quickly become easily identifiable, and even soothing. 

Teacher, not Coronabeth, sat by the bed; he was either praying or thinking, possibly both. His shining head was drooping, but when he saw that Gideon was awake, he gave her a weary smile.

“How I hate the water,” he said, as though this conversation was one they’d had before and he was simply continuing it. “I’m not sorry that the fountains all dried up. Ponds… rivers… waterfalls… I loathe them all. I wish they had not filled the pool downstairs. It’s a terrible portent, I said.”

Gideon couldn’t really argue with that.

“But you’re surrounded by sea,” she pointed out.

“Yes,” said Teacher unexpectedly, “it is a bit of a pisser.”

Gideon laughed. The laugh was weak; she was cautious of pulling at the stitches in her stomach, but from even the slight movement, she could tell that the wound had healed considerably since she’d last been conscious, lending more credence to her feeling that she had slept for some extended period. She heard her laughter shading into hysteria as Teacher joined in, and his eyes filled with tears.

“Poor child,” he said, “we’re all sorry. We never intended this to happen, none of us. The poor child.”

Gideon might’ve been the child in question; she might’ve not. She found herself thinking of the binder full of photos that she’d poured over with a sort of macabre, horrified fascination, as if by witnessing those poor souls, by seeing their faces, speaking their names, she could begin the messy work of righting the wrongs done to them. Most of the photos were of adults, but not all of them. 

“Teacher,” she asked, “are you happy here?”

“It’s an incredible honour,” Teacher bubbled, with a wide, bright smile, belied by sad eyes, “to stand as steward over the House of the First, keeping it in readiness for when our Lord and Master may return and enjoy the fruits of His labour.”

That didn’t answer her question, but she supposed the lack of answer was answer enough. It occurred to Gideon that the First and the Ninth were the only two Houses that understood how to wait for a thing that would never happen. Gideon couldn’t help but feel a common ground with someone who had been given the impossible task of keeping whole a House which was determined to die.

“Do you ever wish you could leave?”

“Oh, good lord no, child.” Teacher said, with a wry chuckle. “This is my home! Where else would I ever want to be?”

Gideon was prevented from pursuing this particular line of questioning when Palamedes and Camilla entered the room, and Teacher instantly sprang to his feet. Before she could say another word, he’d shown himself out.


	38. Chapter 38

Gideon hadn't known it was possible for someone to take so simultaneously dull and invasive an interest in her body. If she’d thought the Sixth would limit their attention to her injured stomach, she was sorely disappointed. They certainly started there, at least. Since her fever had broken a couple of days earlier, she’d been vaguely conscious of them re-dressing her wound, but this was the first time she’d been alert, and, well, brave enough to sneak a peek; she bristled with stitches, to the point that she looked like she’d swallowed a length of barbed wire - which is more or less how it felt as well - but the Sixth appeared pleased with what they saw, and Gideon had to admit they’d done a good job; the skin was a healthy colour with no sign of infection. 

Once a fresh pad of gauze was fixed in place, however, Gideon was not left in peace. Instead, it felt like every inch of her was poked, prodded, and analysed. Palamedes and Camilla were like a well-oiled machine, with Camilla producing all manner of esoteric devices, before her necromancer even asked for them. Gideon was given a glass bulb to hold in her mouth, and two more were tucked under her arms. Her pulse was checked, and a light shone into her eyes - to much cursing on Gideon's part, at the lance of pain which shot through her head in response. 

And the questions. So many questions. _How many fingers am I holding up? Does it hurt when I do this? Can you feel this?_ ( _this_ being a sharp pin jabbed in one of her toes, which she most certainly did feel, thank you very much)

Finally, apparently satisfied, and with more notes written in his little journal than Gideon thought she'd made about anything in her whole life, Palamedes took a seat by the bed. Camilla stayed standing, on the other side of the bed, and it made Gideon just the faintest bit uneasy that they’d placed themselves such that she couldn’t easily look at both of them at once, especially when this was so uncharacteristic; Camilla was always at her adept’s side. Gideon brushed off her concern as the sort of baseless paranoia which came from being almost-murdered by unknown individuals or forces; she trusted the Sixth, and if they’d wanted to kill her, all they’d have needed to do was work just a teensy bit less hard at keeping her alive.

"What happened, Reverend Daughter?"

"I'm 'Reverend Daughter' now? Why the formality? I'd have thought that stitching up my insides would have brought us closer. Which, thanks, by the way. I owe you one."

"You owe me nothing," Palamedes corrected, "the last thing I would ever do is allow someone to die when it is within my power to do otherwise - which it should not have been, I hasten to add. I don't know what it is they're feeding you over on the Ninth, but that was a _mortal_ wound you sustained. If I didn’t have more pressing matters to attend to, I’d be writing you up as a case study, because your recovery is quite literally unprecedented. I was a hair’s breadth from simply putting you out of your misery when I saw the extent of the damage; my initial assessment was that trying to treat you at all would have been not just futile, but would have only served to cruelly prolong your suffering.”

“So why _did_ you treat me?” Gideon asked.

A wry twist of the mouth. “Your cavalier was most insistent."

"Harrow _is_ stubborn, when she wants to be," Gideon admitted, though it was something of a surprise to see that Harrow had bent that stubbornness towards Gideon's survival, when she could just as easily have let Gideon die, and finally been free of the irritation she represented.

"I found it somewhat suspicious, myself, that your cavalier put on such an impressive show over a lost cause, when the circumstances she was found in were deeply incriminating." Palamedes said. "So, while you owe me nothing, I would certainly appreciate it if the Ninth house would stop _systematically_ fucking with me."

"What?" Gideon said, startled by this sudden conversational left turn. "Has Harrow been causing trouble?"

"If by 'causing trouble', you mean loitering outside your door like a spectre, and threatening some quite imaginative violence upon my person if I fail to save you, then yes, she has absolutely been causing trouble, but that's not what I'm talking about."

"Then what?"

"Tell me how you got injured."

"I already told Dulcinea."

"Yes, and now I'd like you to tell me, if you wouldn't mind."

Gideon recounted her tale again, such as it was. 

"... Look, I know that all sounds like nonsense. It doesn't make much sense to me either - but what I do know is that Harrow wasn't in the room when I was injured, okay?"

"You seem sincere enough on that front.” Palamedes paused for a moment, and removed his glasses, starting to clean them on a corner of his shirt. Without the occlusion of his lenses, his eyes were piercingly stark; a flat, unblemished ring of pale lambent grey around the dark of his pupils. Gideon fought the urge to squirm under their scrutiny, though she couldn’t have said what it was about his gaze that made her feel so unaccountably guilty. “Do you want to tell me why the Ninth decided to sneak in a second necromancer, under the guise of her being your cavalier?"

That broke the mounting tension instantly. Gideon couldn’t help it; she started laughing. Just as rapidly she stopped - laughing was not an option, unless she felt like tearing her stitches. "Forget worrying about _me_ , Sextus; you want to get your head looked at. Believe me when I say, Harrow is the furthest thing from a necromancer in this whole damn universe. That chair you're sitting in is more likely to raise a bone construct than she is."

"Bullshit." Palamedes said, succinctly. He was no longer cleaning his glasses, just holding them, but he didn’t put them back on, and Gideon once more felt the full weight of his eyes on her.

"Look, I have no idea what stick you think you're holding, but I know you've got the wrong end of it.” Gideon said.

“You’re telling me that you were in Laboratory Two - the winnowing challenge.”

“Yes.”

“And Harrow, your _cavalier_ , entered the smaller chamber?”

“Yes, and then the door opened to the big room with the window, so I went in there. That’s when it all got weird.”

"That's funny," Palamedes said in a tone which indicated that he did not, in fact, find it funny at all, "because I'd argue that things got weird _a little_ before that. Perhaps around about the time that your allegedly un-necromantic cavalier somehow activated a thanergetic lock."

"A... what?"

"Cam and I did that challenge, as soon as you were stable enough that we could leave you. We wanted to verify Harrow's story - no sense causing her unnecessary distress by keeping her from your side if we could confirm that she hadn’t been responsible for injuring you. So we tried to recreate the circumstances of your injury - albeit with some extensive additional precautions in place to hopefully prevent me from being injured in the same way."

"Okay, and what happened? Did you see what it was that got me?"

"Gideon... I didn't even make it into the room. To open the door to the larger chamber, a necromancer has to place their hand on the thanergetic lock in the smaller room. The trial itself is simple from that point, though far from easy. It hinges on being able to access your cavalier's perceptions; there are theorems worked into the rooms themselves to facilitate this."

"You're not making any sense."

"In the larger room is a bone construct. A regenerating bone construct. Absolutely fiendish stuff, right up your alley, I'm sure, Ninth."

"Regenerating? Really? Holy shit." Gideon was interested, in spite of herself.

"Quite. The construct can't be defeated by sheer force, because of its regenerative capabilities. It requires necromantic perception of the key focal points of the theorem. Only by disrupting them in order can the construct be neutralised. To complete the challenge, the necromancer has to access their cavalier's vision in real time, and direct their actions."

"Okay. So what's your point?"

"The challenge is perfectly simple, as I said, for a necromancer and a cavalier. What you experienced was not a necromancer borrowing their cavalier's optic nerves. It was two individuals wholly exchanging all perceptive faculties. That's why you didn't see the construct coming - you weren't seeing through your own eyes."

"And you're saying that somehow means that Harrow is a necromancer?" Gideon wasn’t going to think about the other implications of what Palamedes was saying, because if that had been Harrow’s mind, Harrow’s body she’d experienced back there… No. She couldn’t think about that.

"Unless you have a better explanation. And while you’re at it, maybe you can explain a couple of other things for me."

“Like what?”

“The two of you couldn’t complete the apple challenge. Your ward wouldn’t coalesce in Harrow’s hands; it’s almost like her own innate thanergy was throwing it off.”

“I’m a bone magician, Palamedes. I suck at spirit wards. That’s all.”

“Hmm.” Sextus sounded distinctly skeptical. “And what about her build? Cover it up in robes and paint all you like; she has all the hallmarks of classic necromantic wasting disease. I’ve never seen anyone who isn’t an adept, or almost-fatally malnourished, with that body type.”

“We don’t exactly indulge at dinner on the Ninth.” Gideon said, defensively. Harrow was just like that; even when food was available she never seemed to want it, but any criticism of Harrow’s wellbeing came painfully close to echoing Gideon’s own sense that she’d failed Harrow by indulging her tendency towards asceticism.

“ _You_ clearly eat well enough,” was Palamedes’ counterpoint. Nothing in his tone indicated any criticism towards her treatment of her cavalier, only the same suspicion he’d been levelling at her for the whole conversation, but oh, the implication that Gideon might gorge herself at Harrow’s expense burned.

“Anything else?” Gideon asked, ready to be done with this particular line of questioning.

“Need I add anything else? You haven’t adequately explained a single one of my points thus far.”

"I've given you all the explanation I have," Gideon said honestly, "but there must _be_ another explanation, because Harrow is categorically not a necromancer." A sudden, horrible thought occurred to her. "You haven't said any of this to her, have you?”

“The closest I’ve managed to come to any form of conversation with your cavalier was when she was threatening me with some quite creative and incredibly detailed forms of evisceration should I fail to save your life.” Gideon couldn’t help the fond smile which crossed her face at this. She was very familiar with Harrow’s _creativity_. “As I’m sure you can imagine, that didn’t go down particularly well with my own cavalier.”

Palamedes looked over at Camilla then, and Gideon followed his gaze, feeling as though a weight had been lifted when his eyes moved off her. For someone ordinarily so mild-mannered, Palamedes was apparently a force to be reckoned with when he wanted to be. 

Camilla, for her part, made no comment on her feelings about Harrow threatening her adept, beyond the very faintest furrowing of her brow, but even that was more of an expression than Gideon had ever seen on her face, so it still spoke volumes.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t say anything to her. That sort of comment is liable to have _someone_ leaving in a box. Believe me when I say that suggesting to Harrow that there is even the slightest trace of a hint of a slim possibility that she could have the tiniest, most ineffectual smidge of necromantic aptitude would be the cruellest thing anyone has ever done to her, and, uh, she’s no stranger to cruelty. The Locked Tomb is hard on those that serve it, and harder still on those it has no use for.”

Gideon closed her mouth so abruptly that the clack of her teeth was clearly audible in the quiet room. She felt a prickling, nauseous wash of shame when she realised that she’d said far more than she intended to. She looked suspiciously at the needle in her arm, the bag of slightly-cloudy fluid attached to it. 

“Hey, have you doped me with something?”

“You mean, _besides_ the meticulously crafted cocktail of painkillers, antibiotics, and electrolytes that have been keeping you alive? No. I haven’t _doped you_ with anything.” Palamedes sounded like he wasn’t sure whether he was offended or amused by her sudden panic.

“Why’m I telling you all this, then?” The faint slurring of Gideon’s words could just have been a sign that her beleaguered, convalescing body was reaching the end of its strength, and it was time for her to sleep - but Gideon chose to interpret it as something more sinister; she could accept the notion that the Sixth had slipped her some sort of truth serum far more easily that she could countenance the idea that she was talking so openly about Harrow and their relationship of her own free will.

“Perhaps because I asked?” 

“Seriously, Sextus. I don’t talk about this shit to anyone. Not even people _from_ the Ninth,” _especially not people from the Ninth,_ Gideon continued mentally, but she didn’t voice the thought. “Why am I suddenly airing my dirty laundry for the _Sixth_?”

“One of the painkillers I used does have a mild narcotic effect, but can hardly be said to be recreational in the doses I’m using, especially given the level of pain it’s currently working to counteract, so I’m afraid there’s no chemical impetus behind any good will you may be feeling towards me.” Palamedes smiled ruefully at her. It wasn’t a happy expression, but it was a drastic improvement over the suspicion-slash-betrayal he had been displaying. He even unwound enough to settle fully into the chair, no longer perched on the edge of the seat. He still looked tense enough to be at risk of pulling something, though, so Gideon knew that she wasn’t out of the woods. 

“Have you considered,” he continued, “that perhaps we’ve just built up some sort of a _rapport_ , over the time we’ve been here? And just maybe my heroic efforts to save your life could be said to have further cemented that rapport? Heavens forfend - could it be that the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House has made a _friend_?”

And just like that, the reason for Palamedes’ earlier distress became clear. As scion of the Ninth, Gideon had learned early and learned well that only silence and secrecy meant safety; truth was a heavy, waterlogged suffering, and ignorance a mercy. But she read her comics, and her magazines, and even the occasional novel. She knew her experience wasn’t universal. 

In the other Houses, people had _friends_ and friends _confided_ in each other. True, Gideon’s reading had lead her to believe that sharing secrets would involve rather more in the way of pillow fights and scanty nightwear, but Gideon hardly had the energy for such things right now even if she’d wanted - or honestly, been able - to picture Palamedes in a negligee. 

Palamedes was hurt because Gideon had been keeping a weighty and uncomfortable secret from him; a burden he would willingly have shared, because he thought they were… friends?

Were they?

_Weren’t they?_

“Palamedes…” she said, apologetically. “I do have secrets, but they aren’t what you think, and they aren’t my secrets to share. I swear to you I’m not keeping anything from you that I could ethically disclose.”

It took a heroic effort of will not to give at least one of those secrets away by casting her eyes over to the skeleton who had entered the room just a few minutes earlier, and was currently occupied with folding a great basket full of clean, uniformly black laundry into a chest of drawers on the other side of the room. She hoped they heard her, and knew that she wouldn’t betray their secret. 

“And Harrow isn’t a necromancer.” She continued, “I’d bet my life on it. I agree that what happened when I got injured appears to be inexplicable, based on what you’ve said about the challenge parameters, but we’re just going to have to find another way to explic-it, because that isn’t it.”

Palamedes’ silence then felt like being poised on a knife-edge. Gideon kept her focus on him, holding that eerie grey gaze with an effort, but she didn’t need to look at Camilla to know that she’d be poised for action. If Palamedes didn’t believe what Gideon was saying, there was a non-zero chance that she might not survive the next couple of minutes. She did her best to look innocent, then worried that she was trying too hard, and that this would make her seem guilty. She could almost see the calculations taking place in the Master Warden’s mind as he weighed her words against the evidence, and for one, horrible moment, those calculations did not look to be going in her favour. 

Then, there was the briefest knock at the door, before it swung open to reveal Dulcinea, perched precariously on splayed crutches and looking delighted to see Gideon awake. Palamedes softened, as Gideon had noticed that he always did when the Seventh was around. Gideon shot a quick glance to the other side of the bed. Camilla had… not softened. Instead, she looked as though it was an unexploded bomb which had walked into the room, not a dying girl. _Interesting._

“There’s our star patient!” Dulcinea bubbled merrily, starting to make her way across the room. Palamedes put his glasses back on and leapt to his feet to help her across the room. Dulcinea sank gracefully into the seat he’d vacated, and took Gideon’s hand in hers, manoeuvring their joined hands into her lap without tangling Gideon’s IV. She did this with the ease of long-practice; Gideon realised that Dulcinea had probably spent a fair amount of her own life hooked up to such devices and felt unaccountably sad. 

“Hey, Dulcinea,” she said, struck with sudden inspiration, “you should talk to Palamedes - he’s great with all this medical stuff. Maybe he can help you?”

Then, something very strange happened. Gideon, from in her position tucked up in the bed had the perfect vantage point to see the way that Palamedes winced, simultaneously with Camilla becoming, if such a thing was possible, even more expressionless.

“I’m afraid I did all I could for Duchess…” Palamedes started speaking, at the exact same moment as Dulcinea said “I couldn’t possibly impose on a stranger...”

There was a moment of charged silence, when it felt like anything at all could happen.

“You know me?” The woman that Gideon knew as Dulcinea Septimus said to Palamedes

“Apparently not.” He replied, expressionlessly.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter is going up a bit early today, as I've got something else to post later on :)

Dulcinea’s face changed, in an instant. Gone was the kind, wilting smile, and in its place was a ancient, malevolent cunning that made Gideon’s blood run cold. The only things which remained unchanged were the eyes, still that luminous, unreal blue. Dulcinea sprang to her feet, and in the same smooth movement, raised one foot and kicked Palamedes square in the stomach. He fell to the floor, clearly winded, and not just from the blow.

“That lying little bitch,” Dulcinea remarked brightly, to no one in particular, with what sounded like a grudging admiration. She raised a hand and Gideon watched with no small amount of awe interwoven with her dawning terror as a shank of bone extended from Dulcinea’s knuckles, until it had almost the exact dimensions of a rapier. Fucking hell - Gideon was a bone adept, a _Ninth_ bone adept… _the_ Ninth bone adept, and she couldn’t have managed that. Something was very wrong here, and her brain was scrambling to fight past the fog of exhaustion and drugs to figure out what it was; it was starting to look like her life might just depend on it. 

“Who are you?” Palamedes managed to wheeze out.

Before ‘Dulcinea’ could answer, Camilla vaulted across Gideon - _ouch_ \- and interposed her body between Dulcinea and her fallen necromancer, drawing twin blades which Gideon had never seen before; _when had she ditched her rapier?_

“My name is Cytherea the First,” the imposter said in a voice which bore almost no resemblance to the one that Gideon was used to hearing from those blood-speckled lips. This voice was chill and ageless; an ugly curdled melange of fury and sorrow which was almost physically painful to hear. “Lyctor of the Great Resurrection, the seventh saint to serve the King Undying. I am the vengeance of the ten billion. I have come back home to kill the Emperor and burn his Houses.” 

Despite the presence of Camilla, standing before her with blades drawn in an obvious threat, Cytherea turned her head, taking her eyes off the cavalier and her knives and looking instead at Gideon, where she still lay, paralyzed with shock. “And, Reverend Daughter - _Gideon -_ this begins with _you_.”

Camilla’s blade at her throat returned Cytherea’s attention to the battle at hand, before Gideon could react to her words. With astonishing speed, Cytherea raised that shank of bone and knocked the knife out of the way in a single, fluid motion which ended with two inches of razor-sharp bone sunk in Camilla’s right shoulder. Cytherea didn’t bother to withdraw; as she swept her improvised blade to the side, the tip snapped off, staying embedded in Camilla’s flesh. Even as Gideon watched, the shank of bone reformed to a perfect, honed point. Gideon thought she saw blood on Camilla’s blade, but when Cytherea turned back to face her again, her neck was whole and uninjured.

“Cry mercy,” Cytherea said to Gideon, before she had to look back to Camilla and defend herself in earnest. Camilla must be in tremendous pain, but at least she wasn’t losing too much blood, with the hole in her shoulder still plugged with bone. She shifted her weight seamlessly, leading with her left now, rather than her injured right.

Though Cytherea kept her eyes on Camilla now, she continued to speak to Gideon, as casually as if she were still sat in the abandoned seat by the bed, and not engaged in a fight for her life. “Please,” Cytherea continued with what sounded like genuine entreaty, “you don’t even know what you are to me… you are not going to die here, Gideon. If you ask me to let you live, you might not have to die at all.”

“And Camilla? Palamedes?” Gideon asked, already knowing what the answer would be, from the ferocity with which the lyctor pressed her attack on the Sixth.

“Will die, along with everyone else on this cursed planet.”

“Then I die too,” Gideon said, simply.

Cytherea shrugged. “As you wish,” she said, and then she said no more. 

Gideon watched with fascinated dread as the two fought. Cytherea fought with the ease and precision of a born swordswoman, all weakness and frailty gone as if they’d never existed. Camilla was poetry in motion - and not that pansy-ass nonsense Ortus wrote; this poetry was so raw it bled. She was the complete opposite of everything Gideon had been told to expect from a Sixth cavalier. 

But then, she supposed that Harrow was the polar opposite of a Ninth cavalier. At the thought of Harrow, Gideon had a dilemma. On the one hand, putting Harrow in danger was the last thing she ever wanted to do. On the other, Harrow _was_ her cavalier, and as vicious and magnificent with a blade as Camilla was - and for all her prowess, Camilla was in trouble. 

“Harrow!” Gideon called, as loud as she could, hoping that Harrow was within earshot. By all accounts, she spent most of her time just out in the hallway…

It took a moment for Gideon to realise why Camilla was having so much trouble; as she watched, Camilla sank one blade hilt-deep in Cytherea’s stomach; a mirror to Gideon’s own wound, but Cytherea barely flinched, barely bled. With the knife still lodged in her gut, she twisted her body, yanking the grip from Camilla’s hand. Camilla was now down to a single weapon, and was bleeding from a few cuts and gashes of her own; most minor, but at least one worryingly deep, in addition to the puncture in her shoulder. Cytherea, in comparison, looked as fresh as if she’d just gotten out of bed, as though her intestines weren’t currently wrapped around six inches of good steel.

Palamedes was still on the ground, but he’d dragged himself across the floor until his back was to the wall, where he wouldn’t be in Camilla’s way. His forehead was prickling with blood-sweat, but whatever he was doing it didn’t seem to bother Cytherea in the slightest; she fought on, unhindered, focusing her attacks on Camilla’s weaker right side.

Remembering the fragment of bone still inside Camilla’s shoulder, Gideon reached for it with a half-formed plan to blunt the sharp edges of it, to avoid causing more damage as Camilla moved around, or perhaps sprout a cuff to wrap around her shoulder entirely, holding it securely in place to properly stem the bleeding, but Gideon couldn’t even touch it. At the first tentative probe of her necromancy, Cytherea was there, her power whiplash-quick and devastating as a battering ram, pushing Gideon away without any apparent effort, without so much as missing a single parry.

“Harrow!” Gideon called again. She reached automatically for the bone in her pockets - surely Cytherea had only dismissed her necromancy so ably because it was Cytherea’s own bone she’d attempted to manipulate. _Surely_ Gideon would have more luck with neutral osseous matter… Then she realised she wasn’t wearing her robes; she had no bone at all to hand, only the teeth strung on a cord around her neck, which even now she was loath to sacrifice. _Fuck_. 

Well, she was still in her own quarters; there would be plenty of bone here, she’d just have to look for it. 

She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind, looking for the little pings of thanergy which would indicate the proximity of workable bone. Instead, she found a mass of thoroughly unworkable bone, only inches from her. Gideon’s eyes flew open, and she saw that the skeleton who had previously been folding laundry had come up next to her, carefully, so as not to attract the attention of the duelling pair on the other side of the bed. In outstretched hands, the skeleton held Gideon’s unsheathed two-hander. Gideon took it automatically, though it crossed her mind that she wasn’t entirely sure she was fit to lift it in her current state, and then the skeleton looked her square in the face, making sure she was paying attention, before drawing a finger significantly across their neck, and pointing to Cytherea.

Gideon didn’t stop to think. Camilla was still fighting like fury made flesh, but that flesh was weakening. She’d switched her sole remaining blade to her left hand, and her right was tucked up against her chest, shoulder not just punctured, but hanging at an unnatural-looking angle. Her clothes were soaked through with blood in several places, so sodden that blood dripped from the hem of her tunic to splatter on the floor around her. As Gideon watched, she saw Camilla’s foot come down on one of the puddles of her own blood, and slide. For a horrible moment, it looked like she’d lose her footing altogether, but somehow she stayed upright.

Hoping that she wasn’t about to pull at least a dozen stitches and possibly permanently disable if not outright kill herself for no good reason, Gideon threw off the blanket over her, pulled the needle from her hand, and launched herself to her feet as quickly as she could, hoping to do what needed doing before the consequences of so much movement caught up with her. 

It was fortunate that it took only a single step to bring her within range; Gideon wasn’t certain she’d have managed a second. She caught Camilla’s eye over Dulcinea’s shoulder. Only for a moment, but long enough to communicate the message _stand back a second._ Gideon could have married the Sixth House cavalier on the spot; Camilla gave ground seamlessly without the slightest indication that she was doing so for reasons other than Cytherea’s aggressive attack. Once there was enough space between them that Gideon could be sure not to catch Camilla with her swing, Gideon took a deep breath, and cleaved Cytherea’s head clean from her shoulders.

The room spun, going dark around the edges, and the floor surged up to meet her. It wasn’t until Gideon saw Harrow standing over her, that she realised the pounding she’d heard had been footsteps, not the overtaxed beating of her heart. At the stricken look on Harrow’s face, Gideon became aware that finding your necromancer inexplicably bleeding out on the floor from the same mortal gut-wound twice in as many weeks, when you were literally just a room away, might be the sort of thing that could give a cavalier a complex.

“S’all fine,” Gideon lied through teeth that wanted to start chattering with cold, even though she felt like she was on fire. This time, when the blackness reached out its arms to her, she embraced it eagerly, diving down into oblivion just a step ahead of the agony which consumed her.


	40. Chapter 40

Gideon was lost again in dreams, fever-vivid, though her last convalescence was recent enough that now Gideon recognised her fever dreams for what they were. So recent, in fact, that perhaps it was a mistake to think of them as separate instances; surely the memory of killing Dulcinea was just one more product of an overheated brain, and Gideon had never roused from her sickly slumber. 

Now, she sometimes recovered enough of herself to grasp at an awareness that what she was experiencing was not real, though the visions were no less painful for this awareness; they came interspersed with memories, memories so old that Gideon had thought them lost altogether, or locked away beyond any possible retrieval, so meticulously that even knowledge of their existence was prohibited. Memories of Gideon and Harrow together, when they’d been content with each other still; too young to understand more than that basic, childish need for the company of other children.

She remembered chasing a small, frantically giggling Harrow, barely old enough to toddle ahead of her, remembered holding herself back from her full speed to eke out the race; she could have caught the smaller girl in seconds if she’d wanted. Gideon remembered finally catching her, reaching out with fingers bent on nothing more awful than tickling, in the days when Gideon could still reach out without Harrow flinching away.

She remembered lying on the cold floor of the Ninth, staring up at the ceiling with her head pillowed on her hands, the small weight of Harrow’s head nestled in the hollow of her stomach where she could feel the kick of Gideon’s muscles as she chuckled; Harrow’s chimelike giggle, now long-silent, fuelling Gideon’s own laughter until she couldn’t stay still, until they ended up curled together, the space between their small bodies holding only joy, only a simple delight in their togetherness and a naive trust that what they built would never be broken.

The memory of its breaking was too cruel; even twisted with pain and consumed by the feverish fire of her body’s own making, her mind did not make her suffer through that particular recollection. Instead, came a memory which couldn’t be a memory at all, that must be a dream, for all that it felt as real as the other memories. Gideon, small still, perhaps five years old, holding a fragment of bone, feeling it twitch, forming, meticulously, phalange after metacarpal, a full right hand, and turning to see that Harrow held a left hand, a perfect match to Gideon’s right. Together, they progressed, bone by bone, ulna and radius to humerus to clavicle. They hit the spine and diverged, Gideon taking on the larger job of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae all the way down to the coccyx, the pelvis, and finally the legs and feet. Harrow, in turn, produced the smaller, but oh-so-intricate skull, and her touch was so delicate that each tooth was perfectly formed; the fragile blossom of the ethmoid bone flawless; the sutures holding the skull together were osseous poetry. Finally, their eyes met over their completed construct, sharing a look of exhausted elation. 

_This isn’t how it happens._ The joy she felt, reliving that moment, shattered instantly as the thought bubbled up inside her

The two of them, standing shoulder to shoulder, - or as close as could be managed, given the difference in their heights - amongst a mess of half-formed ribs and spines and scapulae. Taking it in turns to throw a tiny fragment of bone in the air, to see how much the other could construct before the bone hit the floor. Harrow was younger, but Gideon could throw higher, so they were almost evenly matched, and they laughed together as it rained bone.

 _This isn’t how it happens._ That thought again, and the memory dissolved.

She sat across the room from Harrow, each of them watching with concentration as two constructs wrestled in the space between them. Gideon felt blood-sweat prickle on her brow as she fought to get the upper hand; her construct was larger, sturdier, but Harrow’s was fiendishly quick, and every time she thought she had it pinned, it wormed its way free. 

_This isn’t how it happens_ , Gideon thought, again, finally. Yes, there had been a time when the Reverend Father and Mother had assumed that Gideon and Harrow were necromancers both - an easy mistake to make when they were always together, but in the end the truth had become obvious. Only Gideon had ever possessed the aptitude.

Gideon opened her eyes; no, she only thought that she opened her eyes. Clearly, she was still dreaming. In this dream, she turned her head to the side, and the cavalier cot that had lain unused at the bottom of her bed was now beside it, and in it, lay Cytherea.

Gideon knew that this could only be a dream, because the lyctor still had her head; Gideon could see the slender arch of her unsevered neck, the pale tracery of blue-green veins beneath the paper-thin skin. She was almost perfectly as Gideon remembered her, though her fawn curls had been shorn, cut close-cropped to her head, and from one of her nostrils there ran a slender, cartilaginous tube that had never been there before. 

Gideon saw that the two of them matched; they each sprouted a needle from the back of one hand, hooked up to twin bags of fluid, hanging from the beam of the four-poster bed she lay in. She moved the hand slightly, and winced, wishing that her dreams weren’t able to so perfectly recreate the sharp, nauseating ache of the needle shifting inside the flesh of her hand.

“Griddle?” Gideon turned her head to the other side, and saw that Harrow was in this dream, sitting, with her head bowed, in the chair next to Gideon’s bed. Of course she was; Harrow was in all of her dreams. There was something abject, defeated, almost helpless in the way that Dream-Harrow’s hands lay limply open, palm up in her lap. The skin of her palms was pale, and the sight struck Gideon as almost indecently intimate; between her robes, her paint, her veils and the gloves she usually wore for fencing, it was rare to catch more than the occasional glimpse of the cool ochre of Harrow’s bare skin, like an icy, washed out, reflection of the deep, warm brown of Gideon’s own. Gideon couldn’t recall ever having seen the bare cup of her palms in reality; here in her dream, they seemed so defenceless without even pigment to shield them.

“You’re something else with that sword, you know,” Gideon said, because what did it matter what she said here, in this dreamscape? “I always thought rapiers were stupid, but you make them beautiful.”

“What?” Harrow’s head shot up with shock; from the tone of her voice, you’d have thought Gideon had slapped her, not complimented her. Now that Harrow’s face was no longer concealed beneath the hood of her robe, Gideon could see that Harrow was in a state of disarray she’d never before seen. Her paint was haphazardly applied, and smudged in several places; there was a bare strip of skin running down either side of her nose, as though…

“Have you been crying? You’ve got… naked bits.” Gideon couldn’t help herself - she reached out a hand to touch the devastatingly nude skin of Harrow’s cheek, needing to know whether her fingers would come away wet; whether it truly was weeping which had so denuded the skin of its customary paint.

Harrow caught the hand between both of hers before Gideon could touch her, and Harrow’s face was stricken. “Reverend Daughter,” said Harrow, with the slow deliberation of someone close to screaming, “stay quiet, don’t exert yourself. You’re not- you’re not… entirely well. Sextus said you wouldn’t wake for some time, if you woke at all.”

“Sextus knows you’re here? I thought they’d all kicked you out in case you smother me with a pillow, or something.”

“With Cytherea’s murderous intentions exposed, Sextus no longer considers me to be suspect, and has thus discontinued his - frankly inexcusable - campaign of meddling in Ninth affairs. I am your cavalier; I must remain by your side.”

Gideon recalled, again, that this was only a dream, that this Harrow was only a figment of an ailing mind; perhaps more ailing than she’d thought, if she was imagining so poor a simulacrum as this. In reality, Harrow would never permit Gideon to see her in such a state; would never hold her hand so gently, thumb idly brushing over Gideon’s knuckles in a way which seemed unconscious for Harrow, but which Gideon couldn’t help but be painfully conscious of. She grappled, for a moment, with the moral quandary this dream represented. 

Was it wrong, to allow herself to think of Harrow this way? To take this kind of comfort from a figment, when Harrow herself would never entertain such a thing? And then, a new thought occurred; if this was the nearest she could ever come to the closeness she craved from her cavalier, would she regret not indulging that craving, just this once?

Gideon gripped Harrow’s slender fingers, and Harrow startled, as though she’d forgotten that she still held Gideon’s hand. 

“I would have married you,” Gideon confessed, and it was still a confession, though she spoke only to herself; she’d never articulated these feelings, not really, not even in the privacy of her own mind. “I would have loved you, cherished you, adored you, if you’d only let me. Not for bloodlines and heirs, not to satisfy your parents. Not for the Ninth, or for duty, or any of those excuses I gave when I asked for your hand. Just for me. Just because I cannot conceive of a life without you. The cruelest thing you ever did to me was to shut me out.”

Gideon felt tears on her own cheeks then, and she gave in to the weakness which ran through her soul like a faultline. She pulled Harrow to her, and Harrow came, leaning forward in her chair until she was bent almost double, though her blankly stunned expression said that her lack of resistance was more from shock than desire, or even acceptance. 

When their faces were so close that Gideon, staring into Harrow’s eyes, could have counted each hair of her lashes like a penitent counting knucklebones, Harrow finally recovered herself, coming upright with a start, and yanking her hand free from Gideon’s.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Harrow said, shrilly, face transfixed with a terror which would have been better suited to facing down an army of enemies, not a single, half-dead adept. “Your fever must be back. I’ll get Sextus.”

And with that, Harrow fled. 

When she returned with Palamedes and Camilla in tow, the bare streaks of Harrow’s face were flushed almost-black, and Harrow refused to meet her eyes. Palamedes proceeded to check her over, muttering a jumble of medical jargon to Camilla, who scribbled notes as he talked, and it gradually dawned on Gideon that she was not, in fact, dreaming, that she had not been dreaming, and with that realisation Gideon was gripped with a profound relief that Harrow would not look at her, for Gideon was certain that she would die on the spot if their eyes met, even as she could not keep herself from looking at Harrow, wondering if this stupid indiscretion would be the final nail in the coffin for their strained, brittle relationship.

Eventually, Palamedes pronounced her fever-free, and “healthier than someone with such an utter disregard for their physical limitations has any right to be.” He tried to suggest that she sleep, but she was irrationally terrified that if she closed her eyes, Harrow would be gone for good when she opened them again. 


	41. Chapter 41

"Well,” Palamedes said, when it was clear that Gideon would not rest, “if you’re too stubborn to sleep, then you’re well enough to speak. Here's what we know..." 

Palamedes pulled over a chair and sat down. Camilla remained standing, at his side, and Harrow stood too, awkwardly hovering at the far corner of Gideon's bed. Gideon wished she could sit up; this felt like too important a conversation to have while lying down, but she was already in enough pain; for all that she would never admit it, she probably wasn’t well enough for any sort of serious discussion, and it was only pigheadedness which made her try. Using her minuscule reserves of strength to sit up would only widen the gulf between her intentions and her abilities.

Gideon was not the only one feeling the effects of the fight; Though Camilla was still in far better shape than Gideon, there were bandages visible, peeking out from the collar and hems of her loose tunic, and there was a tightness around her mouth which suggested that she was in some considerable pain herself, and being just as stubborn as Gideon about it. 

"The person who called herself Cytherea the First, who came here impersonating Dulcinea Septimus..." Palamedes' voice didn't quaver, but he couldn't meet Gideon's eye. Camilla placed a hand on his shoulder - her left, as she still seemed to be favouring the wounded right - and this seemed to bolster him enough to continue, "made certain that her deception would not be discovered, by disabling Dulcinea, and killing Protesilaus outright.”

“Disabling her?” Gideon asked, realising belatedly that the body in the cot next to her bed was not Cytherea, but the true Duchess of Rhodes.

“Dulcinea was hidden in the Seventh’s quarters; she is alive, but totally unresponsive. I don’t know what Cytherea did to her, but she can’t be woken. We found Protesilaus’ body collapsed in a hallway; thank goodness we got to him before anyone else did. A cursory analysis showed that he died over a month ago, before the trials even started."

"What? But... he's been here with us the whole time," Gideon protested.

"Here with us, and dead," Palamedes confirmed. "That sort of corpse manipulation is forbidden, but not impossible. Protesilaus never set foot on the First; the imposter was necromantically puppeting his body around from the moment their shuttle landed. And shoddily, I must say. I'm kicking myself for not having noticed sooner."

Gideon thought back to the day they'd all arrived, when they'd sat gathered in the Atrium to listen to Teacher's speech, the way Protesilaus stood so still that she'd almost thought he wasn't breathing... until Cytherea caught her staring.

“You know, I’d be a tad insulted that she thought it would be so easy to fool us…” Gideon began

“But she wasn’t wrong,” Palamedes finished Gideon’s thought, with a grimace. “What I wouldn’t give to know what her intentions were. Presumably she was also responsible for the death of Naberius the Third. I don’t fault you for killing her outright, Gideon - I don’t know that we’d have had a hope of subduing her, even if I were the sort of person to countenance any sort of interrogation under duress - but I would sleep a lot easier if we knew her plans.”

“There was that little comment about _killing the Emperor and burning his Houses_ ,” Gideon pointed out.

“Yes,” Palamedes allowed, “But what isn’t clear is why, or even exactly how she planned to achieve those ends through tampering with the Emperor’s lyctor trials. I found psychometric traces in one of the locked laboratories - the Seventh laboratory, I believe - that match our deceased imposter, and the traces were... old. Almost a myriad old. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to work on the assumption that she told the truth at the end, and the woman we killed..."

"I killed," Gideon interjected.

" _We_ killed," Camilla argued back, sounding almost offended.

"Couldn't have done it without you," Gideon agreed, "this isn’t me trying to take credit for your incredible work back there, but if she genuinely was a lyctor, one of the Emperor’s Hands and Gestures, Seventh Saint to serve the King Undying, then you might not want your involvement in her death to be a widely known fact.”

The Sixth adept and cavalier wore matching frowns at Gideon’s words. 

“No one else was here," Gideon continued. She could feel Harrow bristling at the implication that she'd abandoned her duty, and knew that was something she'd need to address, but now was not the time, not when Gideon couldn’t even bring herself to look her cavalier in the face, "so if there's blame to be placed, or consequences to be suffered, there's no reason for all three of us to be on the firing line, and mine's the only blade that could have done the deed; there's no way to behead someone quickly or cleanly with a rapier, or the short-blades you favour, Camilla. Let me take the fall for this; it would be nice to even the score between us."

"As I have already pointed out," Palamedes objected, "there is no score to be evened. You owe us no debt for healing you - that was an act of friendship, and basic human decency."

"Then, in the name of _friendship and basic human decency_ , and also simple pragmatism, let me take the blame for this."

Palamedes sighed. "Let's not get hung up on hypotheticals, here. It's pointless to think that far ahead, when there are far thornier and more pressing issues at hand. I take it you agree that the imposter most likely was the lyctor she claimed to be?"

"Given that she was apparently old as balls, used to hang around the First House on the reg, and didn't find a knife to the kidney to be even the mildest of inconveniences? Yeah, I don't know what other conclusion we possibly could draw from that. But why would one of the Emperor's lyctors want to kill him?"

"Perhaps the desire for more lyctors wasn't universal, and she was angry at what she saw as a threat to her status?"

"That still doesn't make sense. Why impersonate Duchess Septimus? Surely as a lyctor she could have just come back to the First openly, and no one would have questioned her right to be here? And if the idea was to kill us all, then why not kill us all in our beds on night one? Why draw things out the way she did?"

"There is..." Palamedes looked uncomfortable.

"What?" Gideon asked.

"It's just an idea - I don't really have sufficient justification to call it so much as a hypothesis at this point."

"But?"

"Camilla and I have completed all bar one of the challenges now, though I haven’t visited all of the locked rooms they relate to; some of the keys had already been claimed before I got to them, and your winnowing challenge produced a key which none of us can find the room for. Even Harrow’s excellent map didn’t shed any light on that one. Still, a lot can be inferred about the theorems from the challenges themselves, which means that if this is, as I suspect it is, a case of a number of theorems which all work together to form a single, overarching megatheorem, then I now possess approximately seven-eighths of it."

"And?"

"And there's something _wrong_ . Impossible to say for certain without seeing the final piece of the puzzle, which is _not_ an option, but things aren't adding up. If I’m right - if Lyctorhood is nothing more or less than the synthesis of eight individual theorems…”

Palamedes reached up to touch Camillla’s hand where it still rested on his shoulder. Gideon saw him briefly squeeze her fingers between his, seeming to take a comfort from her presence which raised a number of conflicting emotions in Gideon. The old envy, that _anyone_ could have any sort of intimacy with another living soul, when she’d always lived at arms’ reach from everyone. The discomfort that came with seeing another person vulnerable when she’d been taught from birth that vulnerability was weakness, and weakness, failure. But around those familiar thoughts, Gideon couldn’t help noticing that Palamedes and Camilla - always inseparable - had never been physically demonstrative, even to this limited extent. Was that a reflection of the greater level of trust they held her in now? Or were the Sixth just as fundamentally shaken as she was by recent events?

“Then it’s wrong,” Palamedes finished, with a sigh. “There’s a flaw in the underlying logic. The whole thing is an ugly mistake. You remember the writing, on the board down in the facility? _It is finished._ ”

Gideon nodded

“It _isn’t_ finished. It can’t be. That can’t be the answer.” Palamedes sounded acutely unhappy; Gideon wasn’t sure if he was aware of how tightly he was holding to Camilla’s hand now, his knuckles bloodlessly pale, but if the tightness of his grip caused Camilla any discomfort, she didn’t show it.

“But… it is finished. There _are_ lyctors. I am more than typically aware of the existence of lyctors right now, having recently acquainted myself with a lyctoral spinal column.”

“If I’m correct, Gideon, and I hope to God that I’m not, then to ascend to lyctorhood - via the theorem the original lyctors apparently used - requires the death of the necromancer’s cavalier. Not just death. The _destruction of the soul._ The whittling away of the self until all that remains is an endless wellspring of thanergetic power.“

Gideon found that she couldn’t draw breath. Her chest was tight with horror. Harrow, it seemed, _could_ breathe; her sudden intake of breath was audible in the awful hush that followed Palamedes’ words. Harrow could also walk; Gideon heard receding footsteps, the opening and closing of the door, and knew that Harrow had left.

Gideon wanted to go after her. Gideon couldn’t go after her. Gideon hadn’t been able to so much as turn her head to watch Harrow leaving. What expression had been on that painted face? What thoughts in Harrow’s mind, hearing that she had been brought here to die, so quick on the heels of Gideon’s confession that she couldn’t live without her?

At the intersection of those two thoughts; that Gideon needed Harrow to live, that Gideon could only become a lyctor by killing her - not that Gideon had ever wanted to be a lyctor in the first place, and even less so, now she knew the true cost - a shaky conclusion identified itself.

“Do you think that’s why? Did Cytherea blame God for her cavalier’s death?”

“It’s possible,” Palamedes allowed. “If any harm came to Camilla, I know I’d stop at nothing to avenge her,” Palamedes said this so matter-of-factly, as though so close a bond between cavalier and adept was an inevitability, and Gideon felt the glaring absence of Harrow from the room even more keenly, “but then, I would never have allowed that harm in the first place. Presumably Cytherea did allow it. We can’t know for sure what her motivations were.”

“Perhaps we can. Why don’t we ask her?”

“It won’t be an easy task; I already tried calling her back with no success. I wasn’t aware that the Ninth possessed any particular aptitude for spirit magic.”

“We don’t.” _Perhaps if we did, I’d know who I really am,_ Gideon thought. “I trust Abigail; do you?”

“You want to bring the Fifth into this?”

“I mean, we’re going to have to tell everyone at some point, aren’t we? Eventually someone is going to notice that Dulcinea doesn’t look quite like she used to, and… wait, what did you do with the bodies?

“They are in the Sixth’s quarters. I used the same sort of ward as we used on the apples, to keep them from decaying. I considered the incinerator, but there’s still too much to be learned from examining them.”

Gideon whistled through her teeth, impressed. “That must have been one hell of an undertaking; that sort of ward, for the sort of scale and duration you’d need…” Gideon was forced to reassess Palamedes Sextus; she’d known almost since meeting him that he had a formidable intellect, and sufficient necromantic skill to rise to the position of heir of the Sixth, but this was far more than ‘sufficient’; Sextus must be a once-in-a-generation prodigy to have managed such a working, and that was without even considering everything else he’d been doing in caring for Gideon and the real Dulcinea Septimus, and defending Harrow from the Second’s witch hunt.

Whatever he might say, Gideon really did owe Palamedes; more than she’d likely be able to repay. Regardless, she resolved to try.


	42. Chapter 42

In the end, they decided not to tell the Fifth, at least not straight away. As it turned out, Magnus and Abigail were, that very evening, holding a dinner party to celebrate their eleventh anniversary. Invitations had been delivered that morning, but Gideon had been asleep at the time. Gideon was disappointed to be missing it, but didn’t argue the point when Palamedes told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was not well enough to leave her bed. 

Harrow returned a short while later, and Gideon did not ask for an explanation of why she'd left, or where she'd gone. Nor did Harrow offer one. She _had_ argued when Gideon said that she should go along to the Fifth's dinner party to represent the Ninth, but Gideon insisted. She was not ready to be alone with Harrow. And besides, she needed privacy for what she was considering doing. 

Sextus fretted over Dulcinea Septimus in a most un-Palamedes way for the rest of the afternoon, until Gideon was exhausted just from watching him. Even Camilla’s unwavering calm seemed to gradually fray over the course of the afternoon. Eventually Palamedes disappeared into the bathroom, to wash up and get ready for the party. That had been a bone of contention in and of itself; Palamedes had been initially unwilling to leave his ‘patients’ (Gideon was fairly certain that it wasn’t concern for _her_ health which had turned him from a pillar of reason and pragmatism into an insufferable mother hen, but she had enough tact not to point this out), despite Gideon’s assurances that she felt fine, and was more than able to keep an eye on Duchess Septimus, and form a construct to fetch him, if he were needed, but he had eventually been persuaded that it would be rude to snub the Fifth that way.

With Palamedes out of the room, Gideon’s curiosity finally got the better of her. “Why is he being such a weenie over Dulcinea?” she asked, half-expecting Camilla to ignore the question. Instead, Camilla looked at her and brushed her dark, slanted fringe out of her eyes. There was something in her gaze starker than impatience. 

“The Warden,” she said, “has been exchanging letters with Dulcinea Septimus for twelve years. He’s been - a weenie - over her. One of the reasons he became the heir of the House was to meet her on even footing. His pursuit of medical science was entirely for her benefit.”

“But he didn’t… I mean, the whole time we’ve been here, he never…”

“He asked her to marry him a year ago,” said Camilla ruthlessly, some floodgate down now, “so that she could spend the rest of her time with someone who cared about her comfort. She refused, but not on the grounds that she didn’t like him. And they weren’t going to relax Imperial rules about necromancers marrying out of House. The letters grew sparser after that. And when he arrived here - he assumed she’d moved on.”

Gideon paused a moment before responding, letting the full implications sink in. “And the whole time, she’s been…”

“Right here, yes.” Camilla said. “He’ll blame himself if she dies because he didn’t figure it out sooner. We’ll both blame ourselves. I should have known something was wrong the moment I saw her. Dulcie always hated long hair; she said it made her feel like a doll, so she kept it short.”

Before they could say any more, the autodoor to the bathroom hissed open, revealing a damp-haired Palamedes, dressed in uncharacteristically crisp and unrumpled grey robes. Without another word, Camilla made her way into the bathroom herself.

Camilla should have insisted on getting ready first; by the time they were both ready to go, Palamedes had ruined the crisp lines of his formal robes by worrying at the seams in agitation, and there was a discoloured patch on one sleeve where he’d spilled some fluid in changing the bag that connected to the needle in Dulcinea’s arm.

By the time Camilla had finally persuaded him from the room, Harrow trailing sullenly behind, leaving Gideon alone with Dulcinea - well, and with her thoughts, which was to say, not alone at all, but unbearably crowded around with the spectres of the unthinkable - Gideon had decided what she would do to repay Palamedes for everything he’d done. If this also had the side effect of keeping Gideon too busy to think, then all the better. 

It took an unreasonably long time for Gideon to shuffle herself the few inches that she needed to be able to reach out and take Dulcinea’s hand in hers. What she was about to do was arguably stupid, but she reasoned that however physically drained she was, her necromancy had sat basically unused since she’d first been injured, and should therefore be more than ready for a spot of thanergetic reconnaissance. 

Gideon hadn’t thought to do more than poke around and try to find out the cause of Dulcinea’s unconsciousness; if there was anything to be done about her classic Seventh blood cancer, then surely someone would have done it by now. Maybe not the Seventh themselves, given that they idolised the dying, but Palamedes at least. And yet… once she had extended her awareness into Dulcinea’s body, those little sparks of out-of-control thalergy with their orbiting blooms of thanergy nagged at her. It would be so easy to snuff them out, lance them like a boil. 

She held herself back. This was not Naberius; Dulcinea was dying, but slowly. There wasn’t the sort of urgency which would justify such reckless experimentation; still, she resolved to at least discuss it with Palamedes. Almost certainly it was an idea he’d already had, and discarded, and for good reason; he knew far more than she when it came to medicine, but there was no harm in mentioning it, just in case.

Instead, she focused her attention on the brain. If Cytherea had done anything, necromantically, to keep her captive unconscious, the brain would be the logical place to start. 

_There_ \- it was subtle, so subtle, in fact, that if Gideon hadn’t been possessed of such a vast and uncomfortable accumulation of thoughts she needed to avoid, she likely wouldn’t have been patient enough to find it. A slight distortion of the hypothalamus. A… _calcification!_ Gideon almost cackled with delight when she realised how it had been managed. Brains were fatty tissue and fluid, not at all what she was best with, but a calcification was practically bone. Aside from the delicacy needed to work at such an infinitesimal scale, this was something Gideon could have done in her sleep. She nudged at it carefully, eroding just the tiniest bit at a time, waiting for the displaced particles to disperse before dislodging any more, allowing them to diffuse broadly enough that they shouldn’t cause any troublesome clumps elsewhere. 

When Gideon was satisfied that the job was done, she blinked open her eyes to find three pairs of equally furious eyes staring down at her; she must have been under longer than she’d realised, for here were Palamedes and Camilla, back from dinner, with Harrow in tow. 

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” Palamedes said, a dangerous chill in his tone. Before he could respond, though, a confused voice piped up from the cot. 

“Pal? _Cam?_ ”

Palamedes was at her side in a moment, falling to one knee beside the cot. Camilla was fixed to the spot. She looked awkward, flustered in a way Gideon had never seen before, and Gideon suspected that the situation with Dulcinea was even more complex than 'Cam' had implied.

“What’s going on?” Dulcinea asked, “I feel like I’ve just inhaled a lemon! My _brain_ itches. Oh! You did _kill_ the lyctor, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Palamedes

“Was it quick?”

“Quicker than she deserved,” Cam interjected, with unexpected savagery. Palamedes had one of Dulcinea’s hands in his, ostensibly checking that the needle in the back of it had not been disturbed by her abrupt awakening. Now she held out her other hand to Cam, who took it, and let herself be pulled to her knees at Dulcinea’s side. Dulcinea smiled at her then, a tip-tilted grin that showed little white teeth. 

“ _Kiss me_ ,” Dulcinea said, and Gideon couldn’t tell who she was talking to, and turned away before she could find out. “I didn’t come all the way to the First just to lie in a bed while you both stare at me, damnit.”

The problem with turning away, to give Dulcinea and the Sixth what privacy she could while stuck in the next bed, was that it brought her face-to-face with Harrow. If there was anything more awkward than making inadvertent eye contact with someone you’d accidentally confessed your love for, while three people - one a complete stranger - kissed a couple of feet away, Gideon didn’t want to know. This was plenty awkward enough. 

In the end, she settled on staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster, and doing her utmost to ignore the hushed, wet sounds of kissing, the hitches in their breathing which made it sound more like they were crying. 

The tableau was finally broken by a hideous, wracking cough, and Gideon’s head whipped around automatically, startled by how loud it was in the quiet room. Everyone was still fully clothed, which Gideon found reassuring. She was less reassured by the pink foam in the corners of Dulcinea’s lips, lips that were rapidly taking on a blueish hue as she fought for breath. 

The woman who might have been kissing Palamedes, and might have been kissing Camilla, and might have been kissing them both was caught in a coughing fit that seemed to start at her toes and go all the way up. Her spine arched; she bleated, and then began to moistly choke. Palamedes and Camilla worked in perfect concert; he turned Dulcinea over on her side, and Camilla did something awful and complicated with her finger inside Dulcinea’s mouth.

Gideon didn’t see exactly what Camilla removed from Dulcinea’s airways, but a moment later, Dulcinea was breathing again; great whooping breaths as her face shaded back from grey to a feverish flush. Then out came the case of odd medical tools that Gideon was all too familiar with, as Palamedes pulled out the weird _‘Y’_ shaped device he said let him listen to Gideon’s heart and lungs, but which Gideon was convinced he used as punishment when she was annoying him too much; there was no other reason for the damn thing to be so very cold.

This suspicion was confirmed when he rubbed it between his hands for a moment to warm it before pressing it to the paper-thin skin over Dulcinea’s ribs. Dulcinea was far more patient with Palamedes’ examination than Gideon had ever been; Gideon liked to think of herself as someone possessed of many fine qualities, but graciousness was very much not one of them. When Dulcinea was breathing easily - or relatively so - again, and Palamedes had folded away his instruments, she spoke. 

“The lyctor stabbed Protesilaus before he’d finished taking his sword out the scabbard,” Dulcinea said, “then she started asking me questions. _Who were my friends? Was I well enough to go out in public? Was I married?_ I told her a lot of hot bullshit. I knew she was going to take my place, and I hoped you’d figure it out. I don’t remember her putting me out - she woke me up a couple of times since we landed, with more questions. I think she was starting to suspect that I’d been lying.”

There was no resentment in that face, worn out before its time, heavily lined with the marks of pain and care. In repose, she had looked similar enough to Cytherea that Gideon had mistaken her for the dead lyctor, but animated, her face was transformed utterly, beyond all comparison. As with her mediocre job of animating Protesilaus, Cytherea really hadn’t put a lot of effort into her impersonation of the real Duchess Septimus. 

“Oh Pro…” she sighed, miserably, “I wish he hadn’t even come with me. I feel horrible. He should’ve stayed home with his wife and his sons - his wife does _tapestries_ and he breeds _flowers_ for a _hobby._ I stayed on their farm right after my pneumonia because they thought the sitting temperature would be better for me, and if I ever see another rose I shall scream.”

Dulcinea’s smile became ferocious; her lips curled to show that some of the very white teeth were a little pointed, and her pallid eyes seemed to turn up at the corners. For all that she’d just awoken after who-knows-how-long, there was nothing groggy or lethargic about her; she was breathless, alive, and resembling nothing quite so much as a malign fairy. Looking at her now, one of her hands held by the Sixth’s cavalier, and the other by its adept, Gideon remembered that Palamedes had made a war of his whole life in order to prosecute his desire to marry this woman, and wondered how Camilla fit in to it all.

“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she continued, “was the worry that I would soon be dead… and then that lyctor put me so far under that I could dip my toes in the River, and now I am sick of roses, and I am _horny for revenge._ I’m glad she’s dead, but _oh_ , I wish you could have saved the killing blow for me.”

At last, she seemed to notice Gideon and Harrow. If she was bothered by the idea that she’d had witnesses to her abruptly terminated make-out session, it didn’t show. “Oh, hello! Didn’t see you there. I’d introduce myself but, well, I imagine you already know who I am. You can call me Dulcie.”

“Gideon, uh, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth. This is Harrow, my cavalier.”

Before anything else could be said, there was a knocking on the door which led out into the hallway.


	43. Chapter 43

When there was no response to the knocking - everyone in the room having frozen like startled animals at the sound - Magnus’ voice came through the door. “Are you decent, Gideon? We thought we’d come and see if Palamedes can be persuaded to let you have a little dessert, since you missed dinner. Duchess Septimus too, of course. It was very kind of her to keep you company. Jeannemary would have been sad if Harrow hadn’t made it to dinner.”

There transpired then a flurry of conversations conducted solely through eye contact and eyebrow raises, the pursing of lips and the shaking of heads. 

Dulcie, apparently, was having none of it. “Come on in,” she piped up, cutting across the layers of unspoken _what if’s_ and _why nots._ When Palamedes glanced at her in faint reproach, she followed by murmuring, “what? I want dessert.”

Abigail came through the door first, carrying a huge glass bowl which was half full of some vaguely layered confection which Gideon adored on sight. Abigail glanced around the room once, and then looked sharply back at Dulcie, smile freezing on her face. 

“Dear?” She called over her shoulder. “Grab a couple of chairs, would you? I think we might be here a little while.”

Gideon thought carefully while Magnus ferried in chairs from the other room, and everyone got situated and seated to their satisfaction, and finally came to a conclusion. If it was cards on the table time…

“I need some paper, and a pen,” Gideon said to Harrow. If Harrow was surprised, she didn’t show it, but merely reached impassively into her robes, and handed over the requested items. 

Gideon scrawled a hasty note, folded it, and handed it back to Harrow, along with her pen. “Can you take this to our, ah, friends, and let me know what they say?” 

Harrow unfolded the note, read it, and then nodded understanding, before leaving the room. Gideon was conscious of Palamedes’ eyes on her, in particular, and hoped that Bob and the others would trust her judgement and agree to bring the Fifth and Sixth Houses in on the secret; she hated keeping things from them, and besides, the Canaan House servants might be skeletons, but the theorems fixing the spirits in place were not bone magic, and Gideon suspected she’d need help to unravel them, if that was what they wanted her to do.

***

All things considered, the Fifth took the news about Cytherea well. Even better, Palamedes agreed that her intestines were probably sufficiently intact by now for her to try eating, so Palamedes and Camilla did the lion’s share of the talking, while Dulcie and Gideon concentrated on savouring the _trifle_. If she hadn’t already been intrigued by anyone who could make Camilla the Sixth look flustered, Gideon would have known she had a kindred spirit in Dulcie by their shared excitement at the concept of dessert.

“Well,” Abigail said, at last, “if you fetch the head, I’ll certainly have a go at bringing this lyctor back for a nice little chat. Magnus…?”

“Milk and honey from the kitchens, I’m on it.” He got to his feet and left.

“Cam and I will get the head,” Palamedes said, “that is, if you’ll be okay while we’re gone?” This last was directed at Dulcie who rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, finishing with a smirk over at Gideon.

“Get me another bowl of the trifle, and I’ll be absolutely fine.” Dulcie grinned wickedly.

Gideon held her own bowl out in mute appeal, while Palamedes took Dulcie’s from her. He eyed her critically. “Any discomfort, bloating, pain…”

“I promise I’ll tell you if cream starts squirting out from between my stitches. Cross my heart. Now can I have more trifle?”

He huffed briefly, but caved, and a moment later, Dulcie and Gideon were once again merrily tucking in. Palamedes and Camilla followed Magnus out, just as Harrow was coming back in. 

“Now,” Abigail was muttering to herself, “what else… ah, candles. I’ll pop over to our rooms and get some - I should probably check on the children as well while I’m at it. I’m sure Magnus won’t object to lending a little blood to the cause…” still talking to herself under her breath, Abigail wandered out of the room, leaving just Gideon, Dulcie, and Harrow, who had returned to her seat at the side of Gideon’s bed. When Gideon shot her a questioning look, she merely shrugged.

_Well, at least it wasn’t a ‘no’._

"So," Dulcie said, between mouthfuls, "you really are nuns, huh?"

Gideon nearly snorted a whole mouthful of cream and custard through her nose. "What? No! I'm not, I mean, we don't," she protested when she finally managed to swallow. She could feel her face getting hot. "Why, do I look... nunnish?"

"Gideon, is it?" Gideon nodded, "I've never seen anyone look as uncomfortable as you and your cav did when I was catching up with Cam and Pal; I figured that probably you just don't have kissing on the Ninth."

"I mean... we don't. But I'm not like, opposed to it in principle." Fuck. Now it sounded like she was flirting, and badly at that. "I'm not a nun, okay?"

"Okay," Dulcie said, breezily. A mischievous smile was tugging at the corners of her lips, and Gideon noticed a small smear of cream at the side of her mouth. For one moment, her brain served her a technicolour, surround-sound, full high-definition vision of herself kissing away that smudge, before she snapped herself out of it. She'd just met this girl; this girl who was almost a decade her senior, and, by all accounts, perfectly happily involved - one way or another - with the Sixth. 

It wasn't that Gideon had any intentions in that direction, but she was feeling distinctly flustered, and turned about. There had always been a certain charge, an underlying tension to her interactions with Dul - Cytherea. Which, in retrospect, was more than a little creepy, but at the time, it had felt good. And Dulcie resembled the lyctor who'd taken her identity closely enough to confuse Gideon.

And that was entirely without getting into the greater ongoing confusion of Harrow, which was particularly acute right now.

Even as Gideon's thoughts turned to her cavalier, Harrow spoke. "A nun? Gideon?" She snorted derisively. "Unlikely. You should see her magazines. The Reverend Daughter's extreme libidinousness is going to bankrupt our whole House one of these days."

Gideon could have sworn there was something possessive, almost territorial, about Harrow's tone, but she refused to trust her instincts on anything at that moment. Instead, she took the coward's route; ducking her head so no one could meet her eyes, and filling her mouth with another spoonful of trifle in lieu of actually answering. 

“Oh, _I see..._ “ Dulcie sounded like she was having the time of her life, just utterly, gleefully thrilled at the conversation at hand, which made… one of them. Gideon didn’t dare look at Harrow, but she couldn’t imagine that she was enjoying this line of questioning any more than Gideon was. Gideon supposed she _could_ understand where Dulcie was coming from - it sounded like the Seventh was just as dull as the Ninth - it was just that they didn’t hang around so long before dying on the Seventh; geriatric cloisterites did not make for tragically beautiful corpses. 

Thankfully, Magnus returned before much longer, and soon the room was full of bustle that Gideon watched with fascination. 

They placed the candles in a ring on the floor, around Cytherea’s preserved head. Abigail busied herself with an immense diagram, sprinkled in powdered chalk on the carpet, while Palamedes and Camilla drew blood from Magnus and Harrow, as the oldest and youngest present, and then got to work drawing wards around and between the candles. 

When the time came, they all moved to form a perimeter around the diagram - even Dulcie and Gideon were helped carefully into chairs - which was frankly exciting. Aside from her little excursion to part the head that now lay in the centre of the chalk diagram from its body, Gideon felt like she hadn’t left her bed in a century. Abigail kneeled just outside the symbol, and arranged three jugs in front of her.

“Here is the libation,” she intoned, pouring from one jug a thin whitish liquid, which Gideon presumed to be the milk-and-honey concoction Magnus had been sent for.

“You came to deceive.” she said, and spilt another runnel.

“You came in anger,” she said, and spilt another.

“You came to kill,” she said, and another.

“You came to betray your God.” she said, and upended the jug, and shook out the last pale drops. 

“We sacrifice in our halls for you: the best of all our blood, the freshest; the best of all our blood, the oldest.” with this, she tipped the other two jugs out, pouring Magnus and Harrow’s to mingle with the the puddle soaking into the carpet. “Oh, helpless ghost, this is a supplication. I am Abigail for my mothers, Pent for my people. I have come here in the fullness of my power, to the aid of the woman you tried to supplant. I bid you come to us and answer for your actions.”

For a moment, there was the oppressive feeling of _something about to happen._ It built, and built, and then… fizzled.

Abigail didn’t seem daunted. She leaned forward and planted both her hands in the mingled fluids which were seeping into the carpet, but not ever extending beyond the chalk boundary Abigail had drawn. Her hands sank further in than they should have, disappearing almost to the elbow. Some brackish water welled up out of nowhere around her wrists, and the room was filled with the scents of blood and effluvia. 

Again, that sense of pressure, like descending into the very depths of Drearburh’s catacombs and feeling your ears pop. It built higher this time than the last, but again subsided.

“I call Cytherea the First, who came here to kill, and was murdered by those who would have been her victims.”

The pressure started building again and now Abigail seemed to be struggling with something, though Gideon couldn’t tell whether she was being drawn in, or trying to pull something out. Gideon dared a glance at Magnus, but he seemed unconcerned, so she returned her attention to Abigail. 

“Get ready, everyone,” Abigail said, more calmly than Gideon thought anyone should be, elbow-deep into what Gideon suspected was the River itself. “Time to give a good hard tug and see what emerges.”

This third and final time, the pressure did not subside, but burst around them, leaving Gideon feeling shaken, and oddly grimy. The candles flared. Where before they had burned with a meek, yellow flame, now they burned as strong and blue as the vivid, nuclear cerulean eyes of the spirit who was suddenly standing in the centre of the floor, glaring around at all of them. Gideon didn’t recognise the spirit - but she sure as hell recognised those eyes.

Abigail asked: “Who _are_ you?”


	44. Chapter 44

“Fuck off.” Said the spectral figure, one hand on the pommel of a rapier. 

Abigail blazed like a flare from a blue and alien sun. She pulled her hands free, held them out to the spirit in front of her, as if to keep it from leaving, and long prominences of light trailed from her fingers.

When Abigail spoke again, her voice seemed to echo, as though a thousand voices spoke through her. “We seek Cytherea the First. Who are _you?”_

“Fuck off,” the figure said again, “hasn’t she suffered enough? Hasn’t she done her duty, ten thousand times over? I should never have let her talk me into bringing her here to this evil place - but I did, and for that I will pay until the last star in the sky burns out. But even in death, I do my duty; if you call her again, you will regret it.”

And the spirit was gone. 

“Well… that posed more questions than it answered,” said Palamedes, sounding slightly disheartened. 

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve a few more tricks up these sleeves,” Abigail said. “I’ll need to do a bit more preparation, but maybe…”

Abigail looked over at the dresser where Gideon’s two-hander lay, meticulously cleaned, polished, and - Gideon knew it was rank superstition, but she didn’t care - thanked for having saved her life. “That was the blade which struck the killing blow?” Abigail said - it was really only barely a question. Gideon nodded.

“Well, someone’s in there, and whoever it is, they are very angry, and very strong. It’s a different sort of summoning to invite a revenant to manifest itself from inside an object, than it is to call a spirit from the River, so if the lyctor is in there, that would explain why our ritual didn’t produce the expected results.”

“Can you get her out of my sword?” Gideon had very few possessions at all, and even fewer that were important to her. The list was basically; her sword, her necklace, and her magazines. The idea of her beloved sword being haunted was not a comfortable one. She loved that sword; she’d marry it if she could. It certainly had fewer sharp edges, and less chance of injuring her than her other top candidate for marriage material - if it was currently playing host to a vengeful revenant though, that may no longer be the case.

“Not tonight - there’s more kit I’d need, but there is something we can try now. The sword is yours?”

Gideon nodded again.

“Well, if the Master Warden thinks you can spare me a little blood, then let’s see what we can see…”

Palamedes looked no happier about this than he had about Gideon eating the trifle, but again, he relented - though he insisted that Gideon be moved back into bed first. So their second, more ad-hoc, ritual of the night took place on the bed. Gideon was propped up on pillows, Abigail sat opposite her at the end of the bed, and everyone else gathered around. The sword lay, unsheathed, across Gideon’s knees.

“Ready?” Abigail asked.

“Ready.” Gideon confirmed.

Abigail dipped the tips of her fingers into the small bowl containing Gideon’s blood, then she wiped them across the broad flat of the blade, leaving behind a bloody smear, surrounded by a faint blue glow. The blood pooled, collecting into beads, and then forming words.

_GIDEON! GIDEON! GIDEON!_

Gideon felt hot and cold all at once, like her fever was coming back on. “I don’t think that’s Cytherea,” she whispered, appalled to feel tears prickling her eyes. Then, to the sword, even more softly she said ‘mum?”

The words on the blade changed, but they made no sense.

_THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED AND YOU LIED TO ME_

Gideon hated herself for being so weak; hated herself for letting herself believe, even for a second, that there was hope that she might be able to speak to her mother, to find out who she was, and why she had been born. It was a coincidence, that was all. Cytherea had seemed oddly fixated on Gideon, even before Gideon had killed her. Of course Gideon would be on her mind. It was just Cytherea, after all. 

The words changed again, though no one had said anything.

_THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED AND YOU LIED TO ME SO I DID THE IMPLANTATION MYSELF YOU SELF-SERVING ZOMBIE_

“I don’t understand,” Gideon said, watching the nonsensical words form; “she’s not making any sense.”

“Whoever is in there, they can’t hear us. Swords don’t have ears; what we’re seeing are the revenant’s thoughts, rather than any kind of intentional communication. You said you think this may not be the lyctor?”

“It’s stupid,” Gideon said. “It’s probably nothing.” She was still staring at the sword, where the words were still changing, the blood - which should have been starting to coagulate by now - pooling wetly and forming into new words.

_AND YOU STILL SENT HIM AFTER ME AND I WOULD HAVE HAD HIM IF I HADN’T BEEN COMPROMISED AND HE TOOK PITY ON ME! HE TOOK PITY ON ME! HE SAW ME AND HE TOOK PITY ON ME_

“But?” Abigail prompted.

“When my mother died - some of the adepts from the Ninth tried to call her spirit back. They couldn’t hold her for long; we don’t really do spirit magic, on the Ninth - and all she said was ‘Gideon’, three times.”

“That’s where you got the name?” Palamedes asked with an odd note of satisfaction, as if this was a mystery he’d been puzzling over. “It’s not a name I’ve ever come across before, not anywhere in all our records. I had figured it was just because the Ninth are somewhat lax when it comes to properly archiving their records...”

“Our record-keeping is beyond reproach.” Harrow snapped.

“For short term storage, I’m sure it is, but the Sixth is the only House properly equipped for keeping records intact over centuries, and more. The Ninth is the only House which does not transport records to us at least once a decade for archival purposes. Anyway, unless the Ninth has some naming traditions they have been keeping very secret from the rest of us, Gideon is not a Niner name.”

Gideon tuned them out, still watching the blade. Could this be her mother’s spirit, after all? All the years that Gideon had felt like she was alone, unloved, had her mother been at her side the whole time? Gideon’s heart, unused to hope, could not easily absorb this notion. Why let herself dream, when it only ever resulted in heartbreak?

_AND FOR THAT I’LL MAKE YOU BOTH SUFFER UNTIL YOU NO LONGER UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THAT GODDAMNED WORD_

Gideon thought back to Abigail’s words. Whoever this spirit was, they were angry, and strong. That fit with Cytherea. It also fit with the nuns’ description of her mother’s spirit. And the words? The words on the blade fit nothing she knew about either of them. But then, what did Gideon really know about either her mother, or Cytherea the First?

_HIM I’LL KILL QUICK BECAUSE SHE ASKED ME TO AND BECAUSE THAT MUCH HE HONESTLY DESERVES._

Gideon put out a hand, not quite touching the blade, but getting close, trying to feel what Abigail had sensed. She didn’t feel anger. She didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary; it was just her sword, exactly as it had always been, since the first moment she’d put her hands on the hilt, and felt how right it was, as though it had been crafted specifically for her, not sealed up in a niche somewhere, gathering dust.

The words were changing, faster now, and the blade might not feel angry to Gideon, but the sheer pace with which the text appeared conveyed a frantic kind of fury. 

_BUT YOU TWO MUMMIFIED WIZARD SHITS I WILL BURN AND BURN AND BURN AND BURN UNTIL THERE IS NO TRACE OF YOU LEFT IN THE SHADOW OF MY LONG-LOST NATAL SUN_

The room was silent, and Gideon realised, belatedly, that they should probably have been writing down the messages in the blade, but she couldn’t draw her attention from what she was seeing. 

“You can touch it,” Abigail said softly, to Gideon. Though her voice was quiet, Gideon still startled, drawing her hand back guiltily, before she registered what Abigail had said. “The spirit, whoever they are, clearly has a connection to you. This isn’t an exact science, I’m afraid, but it’s possible that we may get more sense if the spirit can feel that you are there.”

Gideon placed one hand on the hilt, tentatively at first, and then gripping it with more confidence when nothing untoward happened, fingers settling into their familiar, well-worn grooves. And then, she watched.

_END OF THE LINE. FALLING. OXYGEN CAN’T LAST THE DISTANCE AND WON’T REDIRECT POWER FROM THE PAYLOAD. INSTEAD I WILL MAKE YOU WATCH EVERY MOMENT AS I GET THE LAST PRIVILEGE YOU CANNOT ENJOY YOU BYGONE SON OF A BITCH._

_I HOPE YOU’RE BOTH AS SORRY AS I AM._

The final words were barely legible; the blood was disappearing, as though it were soaking into the blade. The blue light, as well, was fading. 

But the words…

“That _is_ my mother.” Gideon said, and her voice sounded harsh and alien to her ears. “That’s how she died. She fell into the pit at Drearburh, and her suit was out of power. She died before we landed. I lived. No one ever worked out where she came from.”

The blade was blank, the light gone. “Bring her back!” Gideon begged Abigail without looking at her, eyes still locked on her beloved sword. “She was talking about me, about us, you have to bring her back!”

Gideon only looked up when she felt the hand on her shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” Abigail said, patting Gideon’s shoulder gently. “I can’t do any more tonight. I know this must be so hard for you, poor darling, and if that genuinely is your mother, then you have my word I’ll do everything I can to help you speak to her, but I need to rest now.”

Gideon wanted to protest, but even through her fog of childish longing, she had to admit that Abigail was looking drained. Gideon packed away her wanting, with the ease of long practice, though not without a pang, and nodded. Belatedly, she remembered that it was the Fifth’s anniversary, that they’d intended to stop in only briefly to bring her some dessert - a completely unnecessary act of thoughtfulness, on a day when they could be expected to think of no one but each other. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Your anniversary…”

“Oh nonsense, dear girl,” Magnus said. “Nothing my wife loves more than a good haunting! You know that.”

“Oh yes, don’t worry yourself. This was far more exciting an evening than I’d expected - not that I don't enjoy a dinner party, but you know how they can be - and were I still your age, I’d happily stay up all night tracking down your errant spirits. Alas, I’m not a teenager any more, and old crones like me need our beauty sleep.”

Gideon, who had more than a passing familiarity with actual crones, made a noise of protest at Abigail characterising herself this way, but Abigail merely smiled, and took her husband’s arm gratefully, when he held it out to help her up off the bed. They started making their way over to the door.

“Make sure you all get some sleep too!” Abigail called back, just as they were about to leave the room. “I know what teenagers get up to. Harrow, I’ll let Jeanne know that you’re staying here tonight.”

“No,” Gideon said, to Harrow, more than Abigail; “you should be with your friend. I’ll be fine. I’m tired. I’ll probably fall straight asleep - and the Sixth are here.” Because Gideon was not so much of an idiot that she thought there was any chance that either Palamedes or Camilla were going to willingly leave Dulcie’s side, any time soon. Truthfully, Gideon wanted Harrow to go. Having her there made it even more impossible not to think of her, and Gideon already had too much on her mind. 

Besides - at least one of them deserved the chance to have the sort of pillow-fights-and-hot-chocolate sleepover that Abigail seemed to expect would spring into being the moment she left the room, and which Gideon only knew of from her comics. Gideon couldn’t see Harrow enjoying, or even agreeing to, such a thing - but a month ago, Gideon wouldn’t have pictured Harrow making friends, let alone with a younger cavalier, especially not one from the infamously rambunctious Fourth. Whether it was something Harrow wanted or not, the least Gideon could do was to give her the opportunity. 

When Harrow seemed loathe to leave her side, Gideon said again, “go,” as firmly as she could, and Harrow finally turned to leave, silently following the Fifth from the room. 

Leaving Gideon alone with the lovebirds from the Sixth and Seventh. _Sigh._

“I’m very tired, I should probably go straight to sleep. I’m a very heavy sleeper, so you don’t need to worry about, uh, noise, or anything.” Gideon said, perhaps a tad more forcefully than she needed to, given the way that Dulcie smirked at her. 

“We should all rest,” Palamedes said. “I’m sorry to impose, Gideon, but would you mind if we slept in here? I’d just feel better if Cam and I were right here, in case Dulcie needs anything - or you do, of course.” It sounded less like an _of course,_ and more like an afterthought, but Gideon didn’t say anything. She just nodded, and started awkwardly trying to fish pillows out from behind herself so that she could lay down. Camilla came over to help her, and quickly she was comfortably tucked into the bed.

For all that she had to think about, it truly had been a taxing day, and she was exhausted, mentally and physically. She fell asleep almost instantly.


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates, and happy almost-the-end-of-this-fucking-year to everyone else! 
> 
> Just fyi, this chapter has a big ol' cw for suicide themes and references. Apparently this year I'm being a Grinch... sorry?
> 
> (... I'm not sorry)

The next morning, Gideon awoke feeling better than she had in days. This was surprising - she’d expected to suffer for overdoing it the day before - but instead, she felt alert, energised… and unbearably grimy. 

In the warm light flooding in through the windows, it was easier to avoid thinking about the night’s revelations. Even better, Palamedes pronounced himself ‘pleasantly shocked’ at how well she was healing, and was talking about shifting Dulcie, Camilla, and himself to another suite of rooms along the same corridor, so that they could remain close, but also give Gideon her space. Gideon was accustomed to a great deal of solitude, so having people - even people she liked - around her all the time had been a trial. 

Harrow helped Camilla get everything moved while Palamedes gave Gideon a final, extra-thorough check up. When he was done, Gideon’s room was once again full of only her own belongings. The cavalier cot had even been moved back to its place at the end of her bed, though Gideon had half wanted to suggest they just take it with them; it wasn’t like there was the faintest chance of Harrow ever using it.

Palamedes conferred with Camilla before finally, grudgingly, agreeing that Gideon’s bandages could come off, and the drip come out - though he cautioned that she’d probably regret that latter, and to send for him if she decided that she wasn’t ready to forego analgesics entirely. Gideon was willing to endure some pain in exchange for privacy.

Speaking of which… when it was time for her to be bathed - and the only thing she hated more than her daily sponge bath was when Camilla had to help her use a bed pan - she put her foot down (metaphorically at least; she was still in bed).

“No. I refuse. I’m fine, Palamedes! I got out of bed yesterday, and didn’t even pull a single stitch, not even a little bit. _Surely_ I’m well enough to take a sonic. Not that I don’t love you and Cam, and appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I’m capable of cleaning my own damn self.”

“No sonic,” Palamedes said, flatly. “It’ll dissolve the stitches, and you aren’t ready for them to come out.”

“A shower then!”

“Too much chance you’ll slip, and you shouldn’t be standing for that long. I’ll accept a bath; but only if you have someone with you. I’m not having you drowning on my watch.”

When Gideon had first seen the bath, she’d assumed that there was not a power in this universe, up to and including God Himself, that could get her to use it. Apparently she had been wrong; the only thing that could possibly be worse than immersion was yet another sponge bath where Camilla was as detached and matter-of-fact as she possibly could be, and Gideon stared at the ceiling making awkward jokes and trying to think as little as possible about what was going on. 

“I will accompany my adept.” Harrow said, before turning and walking across the room, and going through the autodoor into the bathroom. Gideon heard the sound of running water.

For a moment, Gideon seriously contemplated giving in and agreeing to the sponge bath after all. But no - this wasn’t weird, and she didn’t have to make it weird. Cavaliers did that sort of thing all the time. It was part of the job; she knew that, intellectually, at least. Even if neither Harrow nor Ortus had ever prepared her clothes or helped her dress or any of that nonsense, she knew that in theory they should.

Harrow was good at that rigid cavalier protocol stuff, and Gideon would give just about anything to be clean - properly clean, the way you just can’t get from being dispassionately rubbed with wash cloths. 

Harrow helped Gideon to the bathroom when the bath was ready, supporting her with surprising strength, given the difference in their sizes. Gideon barely hesitated before slipping off the loose robe she wore; there was nothing quite like being unable to so much as piss unaided to really destroy any modesty she might previously have possessed. She thought back to how she’d panicked at Harrow seeing her covered only in a towel, and smiled ruefully. 

The bath was full. Harrow turned the taps, stopping the water from flowing, and Gideon took a deep breath, before letting Harrow help her step down into the water-filled recess. Before the water had even reached her waist, Gideon had started to tremble. By the time she was fully seated in the shoulder-high bath, she was gasping for breath; she felt like she was drowning in the steam rising from the blood-hot water. She could normally hold it together better than this, but although her days of rest had done wonders for the wound in her stomach, in spite of the way she’d ripped it most of the way back open, overall, she was weaker than she could ever remember being. 

If she'd hoped that it would make a difference, being in these brightly-lit, clinically white surrounds which were the polar opposite of the dark, dank Ninth, or thought that perhaps hot water, rather than cold, or the absence of Pelleamena and Priamhark would make her immersion bearable, she'd been wrong. Worse, she had no hope of hiding it; as soon as she’d settled in the water, it was impossible to ignore the ripples her trembling sent across the otherwise still water.

"Gideon?" Harrow asked, her voice layered with that concern which was still too unfamiliar to be a comfort. "Do you need me to call the Master Warden?"

"No!" Gideon exclaimed, horrified by the thought of having to explain to Palamedes what was wrong. She’d already spilled more than enough of her guts, both literal and metaphorical, over the Sixth necromancer. "No, it's not... anything physical. I just don't like water."

"I'm surprised you've had occasion to develop any opinion on the stuff, all things considered. You've used the sonic since we got here, and I haven't seen you in the pool."

At the mention of the pool, Gideon shuddered outright, unable to suppress the violence of her response. 

"Gideon?"

Gideon couldn't make herself respond. Even though she could see the white walls all around her, it was like she was still on the Ninth. She could feel the eldritch chill of those secret, sacred waters, smell the damp, mould-slick walls, see the flickering of candlelight and taste the salt-water on her lips. She couldn't stop herself shaking.

"Gideon? I'm worried. I'm going to get Palamedes."

Gideon still couldn't speak, but she reached out and took Harrow's arm. Gideon’s grip was too weak to really stop her from pulling away, if she'd tried to, but to Gideon's surprise, she didn't try. Reassured that Harrow wasn’t going to leave, Gideon closed her eyes, and let her arm drop; the effort of holding it up suddenly more than she could manage. She tried to breathe through her panic. Normally, when she felt this way, she'd train with Aiglamene, or raise constructs and shatter them with her sword until her body was too exhausted to maintain any sort of fever-pitch. That wasn't an option now; she was more depleted than she’d ever been before, and yet her body had still managed to summon up some reserves of adrenaline from who-knows-where. She still ran through the old exercises in her head, picturing them, trying to imagine the sensation of her body working methodically through her repertoire of blocks and strikes. There was a rhythm to it which soothed her.

"Harrow?" She managed at last, and her voice was weak and shaky, but it was there. "Did they ever... your parents... did they ever take you to the ceremonial pool they keep, behind their chambers?

Harrow flinched, as though struck, and then her face was as blank and shuttered as a corpse. 

"Once." Though she said only a single word, that one word was more than enough - for all her iron control of her expression, the voice gave her away. "Gideon, there's something you need to know.” 

Harrow stepped down into the water, still fully clothed, until she sat opposite Gideon with her knees drawn defensively up to her chest. Steam hung in the air between them, giving their proximity an air of dreamlike unreality; Harrow’s robes were even blacker now that they were wet; she was a cool, arctic void, punctuated at its apex with the stark snow-white of her skull paint. With her warm brown skin, russet hair, and golden eyes, Gideon felt like the autumn, failing and falling and giving way before the inevitable, implacable freeze of Harrow’s winter. Harrow didn’t look at her, but stared down into the water, as she continued speaking. “It’s something I should have told you a long time ago. I owe you the truth about what I am.”

Harrow took a breath. It was deep and desperately fast, giving Gideon no chance to interject, as though Harrow didn’t dare stop long enough to think about what she was saying. Not that Gideon could have interrupted. The old vow broke over her like a wave, like a flock of carrion crows beating their wings about her head, like an eleven-year-old half-dead from dehydration and still somehow finding tears to cry and a ten-year-old barely conscious and pouring with blood, but stubbornly keeping her feet.

“It was eighteen years ago that my parents realised what they had to do. They knew that needed a true heir, a necromancer of their bloodline to fill the role of Tombkeeper, but as necromancers themselves, they’d found the process doubly difficult, and they were running out of time.”

Gideon knew this story already, had known it for over a third of her short life, but something about Harrow’s words, about their methodical cadence, which proceeded with the hopeless, anguished rhythm of a man walking to the gallows, hypnotised Gideon into silence. There was no interrupting this speech which poured from her cavalier as inexorably, as fatally, as blood.

“She had tried and failed already. She was getting old. She had one chance, and she couldn’t afford chance.”

Even more appallingly, Gideon didn’t just know this story, she knew these words. This was an almost word-perfect reproduction of what Pelleamena and Priamhark had said to Gideon, that day all those years ago. How much younger had Harrow been when _she_ heard these words for the first time? How long had they been etched upon _her_ soul?

“They didn't have the time for chance, but they had other resources, and the willingness to pay the price of using them. Two hundred children." Harrow sounded so tired that she might die of it, but she didn't slow down, didn't stop, didn't leave room for interruption. "From the ages of six weeks to eighteen years. They needed to all die more or less simultaneously for it to work. There was no creche flu, no horrible, but blameless accident. My great-aunts measured out the organophosphates after weeks of mathematics. Our House pumped them through the cooling system."

Another short, sharp breath. "It let me be born. Me. The Death of the Ninth. The dashed hopes of my House. The Unfulfilled Vow, and the Bloody Teeth of the Unkissed Skull. Mistake. Abomination. Genocide.” Something in Harrow’s tone, or perhaps her pitch, reminded Gideon of Pelleamena at that moment; again, this was not Harrow speaking as herself, but Harrow recounting the words her parents had spoken to her, and Gideon burned with fury that anyone could look into those bleak, lightless eyes of Harrow’s, and not see what Gideon saw - something precious and fragile and beautiful. Gideon tried to look into those eyes now, but Harrow still stared, unseeing, into the water. Gideon looked down, too, and saw Harrow’s reflection shatter and reform with each ripple, like a microcosm of their whole lives; each time Gideon so much as took a breath, Harrow disappeared.

“There are so many words for what I am,” said Harrow, enunciating each word with clinical precision, her consonants as sharp as knives, “and there there are _no_ words that can come close to expressing my foulness. I came into this world at the expense of Drearburh's future, because without another necromancer of the tombkeeper line, Drearburh has no future. But I was not a necromancer. I am _nothing_. I cannot be the one thing my House needs me to be, and so nothing else I am could ever matter."

When Harrow finished speaking, the silence stretched out between them as Gideon tried to find the right words to say to this, as she tried to find any words at all around the vow that choked her.

"Say something," Harrow begged into that awful silence. "Tell me you understand now, why you should have let me die, that day. Tell me that you see that I am an atrocity and not worthy of the least of your regard. Tell me you were wrong to have asked me to be your bride, to have allowed me to be your cavalier. Every day that I live as what I am is an insult to those who died. After everything my House sacrificed for me I couldn’t give them what they paid for."

"Harrow..." Gideon wanted to take her cavalier in her arms, but she was too weak, and the space in the bath was too cramped, so instead she reached out and plucked Harrow’s right hand from where it clutched at her knees, nails digging visibly into her skin through the fabric of her trousers. Harrow didn’t resist, though she made a small cry of protest, as Gideon cradled her hand between both of Gideon's own. 

“Harrow, I…” Gideon gagged, choked, her body spasming until she was sure that the rent in her stomach would tear open anew from the violence of it. Blood poured from her lips, and she felt them pierced through as though Pelleamena stood over her now, needle pressed to skin. She was so tired, so weak, and she knew that she didn’t have the strength to do this, but the silence that had weighed heavy on her for seven years was crushing her, and if she was going to die, she was going to die _trying._

She felt the smothering pressure of the vow like a shroud over her face, and she was so far gone, so distant from the reality of her body, that the only thing still tying her to herself was the feeling of Harrow’s hand in hers. She clung to it, seeking comfort now, rather than giving it, as her spirit clawed and scratched and bit at the ties which bound her speech. She had given her vow, yes, but she had been a child still, and scared; her word had not been given freely; it had been the only way to save Harrow’s life. Now she fought in spite of the knowledge that she could not win; she fought with the long-forgotten childhood outrage at the unfairness of it all, with the stubborn conviction that it was Harrow herself to whom Gideon owed her fealty and her fidelity, not the monsters who had birthed her. 

With a tenacity she hadn’t known she possessed, she brought her will to bear upon her vow, her curse, and shattered it at last. She felt it snap loose from around her, and knew that, across the void of space, the Reverend Mother would feel the backlash of its breaking. She wondered whether Pelleamena would assume she was dead, for nothing short of death should be able to unstitch a Sewn Tongue; perhaps she had only freed herself now because she had flirted with death so many times since coming to Canaan House. 

Gideon took a deep breath, tasting the sweetness of the first air to pass unfettered over her tongue in seven years, mingled with the hot blood that still oozed sluggishly from her punctured lips.

"Harrow. I _know_. I've known since the day you stole Samael's chain. They told me everything, in that cursed fucking pool. They explained how they conceived you, and that they would have killed me too, if I hadn't already shown necromantic potential. Isn’t that why you’ve always hated me? I was your understudy, even before you were born. They had such little confidence in you, before you even existed, that they kept me as an insurance policy.” Gideon practically spat these words, and hoped that Harrow could tell that her disgust was for Pelleamena and Priamhark, not Harrow herself. Harrow still wouldn’t look up, and it was killing Gideon not to be able to see her face. “I should have told you that I knew;” Gideon continued, “I shouldn't have let you carry this alone, but they made me swear. Your mother made me a sewn tongue.”

Finally, Harrow looked up at Gideon, her eyes wide with shock, and no small amount of confusion and disbelief; Gideon assumed it was disbelief at the idea that anyone could break such a vow and survive, but instead...

"Gideon,” Harrow breathed, “we didn't leave you out. You weren't an insurance policy. You were one year old! Far too young to show any sort of definite necromantic potential, and there were dozens of other children with the aptitude who died, _true_ children of the Ninth, and old enough to already show skill; why would they have chosen to save you?”

As soon as Harrow pointed them out, the holes in the story she’d been told became breathtakingly, appallingly, obvious; Gideon wasn’t sure whether she was more angry that Pelleamena and Priamhark had thought she’d believe such a weak lie, or that they’d been right. But Gideon had been only eleven, and this single lie had gone unnoticed amongst so much horrific truth. To the extent she’d been capable of it, Gideon had never thought about these things at all.

“You were meant to die, along with all the others.” Harrow continued. “You inhaled nerve gas for ten full minutes. My great-aunts went blind just from releasing it, and you _weren't affected_ , even though you were just two cots away from the vent. You just didn't die. My parents were terrified of you. I think they still are, though they've barely said a word to me since they discovered that I was not the necromancer they paid so dearly for."

The Reverend Father and Mother had lied to her. Gideon shouldn't be surprised. She should be so far beyond even being capable of surprise at the atrocities Pelleamena and Priamhark were capable of, and yet, something about this lie in particular still stung. 

The Ninth had striven her whole life to keep her under its bootheel, to keep her small, and contained, to never let her grow beyond the space allotted to her. Gideon had never understood why they pushed her so hard to perfect her necromancy, and yet were always so appalled at any display of her skill. She’d assumed that they found her talents wanting and had only striven harder - knowing it was futile and childish to crave their approval, yet still unable to stop herself from hoping - but that assumption had been so very wrong.

What Gideon had always interpreted as resentment for their dependence on an unwanted, alien foundling was more than that. Memory took Pelleamena's constant, unwavering scrutiny, and refocused it from disappointment to dread. It took Priamhark's vicious, disproportionate punishments every time she ventured beyond the narrow box they built around her, and made them panicked, not pointlessly sadistic. Gideon's existence didn't shame them, by making their genocidal scheme not just a failure, but unnecessary; Gideon _terrified_ them. She was simultaneously the only hope for their House, and an unknowable, possibly unkillable horror which they could never trust. 

What had Palamedes said? That the wound to her gut should have been fatal? That it was a miracle she'd lived? Gideon didn't feel miraculous. She felt like a stranger to herself. 

But a single look at Harrow's face was all it took to remind her that whatever else she might be, she was still the Reverend Daughter, and Harrow her oblate. She was still an adept, and Harrow her cavalier. She was still Gideon, and Harrow was still Harrow, and Harrow needed her. Everything else would wait.

“Harrow, I'm so fucking sorry."

"Sorry?” Harrow’s response was almost a scream. She yanked her hand from Gideon’s, as though burned. “You apologise to me now? You tell me you're sorry when I have spent my life making you suffer? I hurt you, because it was a relief! You, who are everything our House ever needed, and a miracle to boot? While I was nothing, worse than nothing, a debt which can never be repaid, two hundred deaths that could never be avenged. How can you be _sorry?_ ”

Harrow’s expression was livid, her body explosively rigid, as though she wanted to lash out but still held herself in check, conscious, even now, of Gideon’s injury. Her hands fluttered frantically around her, seeking _something,_ though what that something was, Gideon didn’t know. They settled for a moment on the smooth tile, fingers arched, nails bared. They slid ineffectually over the ceramic, but finding no purchase, moved on. Finally, Harrow wrapped her arms around herself, and Gideon saw her knuckles pale with the strength of her grip, and knew that only the shirt Harrow wore was preventing those nails from drawing blood.

“I am a _war crime_ . The very _stones_ should cry out in horror with each step I take. I am an abomination, and worse, I am _unnecessary_. I have spent my life punishing you for my own failure. You are my only friend, and even with your friendship, I am nothing. Without it, I don’t know how much less I would be."

Gideon couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand to witness Harrow’s suffering, and knew that there were no words to alleviate it. She braced her shoulders against the weight of what she was about to do. She shed eighteen years of living in the dark with a bunch of bad nuns. She put aside her past, and her duty, put aside Harrow’s making and her breaking, until there was only Gideon, and only Harrow. 

She leaned forward, drawing in a sharp breath between clenched teeth as her stitches pulled, and she wrapped her arms around Harrow Nova, holding the thin body close to her chest as she lay back again. They both went into the water, and the cavalier of the Ninth fell calm and limp, as was natural for one being ritually drowned, but when Gideon did not pull her head under the water, but only cradled her, like something precious, she thrashed as though her fingernails were being ripped from their beds. 

Gideon did not let go, not as Harrow screamed, and spat, and cursed her. Not as the screams morphed into sobs. Not as the water cooled around them, and the skin of her exposed arms prickled with gooseflesh. Not as, finally, Harrow exhausted her bitter tears and lay limp, and defeated, head tucked neatly into the bare hollow of Gideon’s shoulder. 

Gideon looked down at that familiar, point-boned face, made new and alien in its blankness; Harrow’s paint had nearly all washed away. She examined the brows, relaxed from their perpetual frown, the sharp, jutting promontory of the nose, the disdainful set of the jaw, and the panic in those starless eyes as they looked up into hers. Gideon pressed her lips to Harrow’s forehead, and the sound that Harrow made embarrassed them both, but still Gideon let the kiss linger, just a moment. 

When she pulled away, Harrow’s forehead was pink-smeared, Gideon’s blood mixing with what remained of her paint, and that ruddy wash of colour only served to highlight how sallow Harrow’s skin was, how sunken, how her eyelids were smudged bruise-purple. 

“Harrow.... will you tell me something? Will you answer truthfully, if I ask?"

Gideon almost thought that Harrow wouldn’t answer at all, but she gave a single, slow nod. 

“That day, when you stole the chain, and I saw you outside the tomb. What was that really about?”

A long moment of silence. Harrow met Gideon’s gaze for a moment, and then stared down into the water.

“I was tired of being two hundred corpses. Two hundred corpses without a purpose. It’s foolish, really, but somehow, I felt like the tomb was still my birthright; that perhaps it would open for me, or that it would kill me. Either way, it would have been something.”

“Did you really want to die?”

Harrow laughed - though Gideon wasn’t sure the sound could properly be called a laugh, for it was utterly devoid of humour. 

“Do you know why I can’t let you in my cell?”

“Because you hate me.”

“Nothing so simple or easy as that.” Harrow pulled herself out of Gideon’s embrace, attempting to untangle the layers of robes plastered against her skin. She huffed, frustrated, and climbed to her feet, water sheeting from her as she tried to extricate herself.

“Harrow?”

“I need to... I feel like… if I’m telling you the truth, then I should tell you the truth about everything.”

It took every ounce of Gideon’s self-control not to pull Harrow back down into the water, into her arms, and tell her that she didn’t want the truth, that she’d had enough of truth, that she only wanted Harrow and was suddenly afraid of losing her again. It would have been weak, and foolish, and worse, it would have implied that Gideon didn’t think she could learn whatever it was Harrow wanted to tell her, and still care. This - this talking, Harrow, talking to her, for the first time in years - it was too precious, and too fragile, and Gideon worried that Harrow standing meant Harrow leaving, and everything between them would dissolve if Harrow left the bitter truthfulness which the salt-water meant to both of them. But at the same time, Gideon knew for certain that trying to hold Harrow against her will would destroy anything she was hoping to rebuild. 

Hesitantly, she nodded.

But Harrow didn’t leave. She simply shucked her outer robe, letting it fall to the tile with a wet slap, and uncoiling… something… from around her waist. After a moment, Gideon realised it was a length of rope.. Without a word Harrow sank back into the water. She didn’t resist when Gideon took her hands, examining what she held. Gideon looked at what Harrow held, and when she understood what she was seeing, she wanted to take it from Harrow, fling it away from them both - an instinctive, visceral rejection - but Harrow gripped the noose tightly and would not let go. 

“What is this?”

“The last kindness my parents ever showed me.”

“Kindness?” Gideon exploded, before fighting to moderate herself when she saw how Harrow flinched away from her volume. “This isn’t kindness.”

“My parents told me how I was made when I was very young; too young for them to have realised the failure I represented. That was the one time that they… that I was allowed in the sacred pool.” Harrow was counting out the twists of rope between her fingers, reflexively, almost ritually, like her Great Aunts praying on their knucklebones. 

“When they understood that I would never repay the debt I was born to, they gave me this chance to end things honourably. I let them down, in this, as in everything else. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t die, though I know I have been dead in their eyes since that day. But I have slept beneath the noose each night since then, carried it with me each day and someday, I’ll do my duty. Until then it serves as an ever-present reminder that I could not do the slightest thing my House expected of me.”

“Harrow… your parents figured out you weren’t a necromancer when you were _four years old_.”

“Yes.”

“You see how messed up that is? Please tell me you see that it is fucking insane to expect a four year old to hang themselves.”

“I’m not four anymore.” Harrow pointed out. “And I have never been a child, not really. From birth I have been so much more, and so much less, than human.”

“You’re not the one at fault here! You don’t deserve to die for what _they_ did!”

“It’s okay,” Harrow said, and a calm came visibly over her; a calm which somehow disturbed Gideon more profoundly than anything else in this whole disturbing conversation had. “I understand now. I see what I’ve been waiting for. I _do_ have a purpose.” She undid several buttons on her shirt, exposing a bare stretch of skin down the centre of her chest, and then she moved, until she was kneeling between Gideon’s knees, close enough to make Gideon catch her breath, though she did not know whether it was fear, or some other, darker emotion which gripped her. 

Harrow reached behind her into her sodden boot and pulled out a long, slender dagger that Gideon hadn’t even known she carried, and then Harrow took Gideon’s hand, curled her numb, unresponsive fingers around the hilt, and pressed the tip to the thin skin over her heart.

“No,” Gideon tried to pull away, but Harrow’s grip was still firm over hers, and Gideon was still weak.

“I know I don’t even deserve to die at your hands, but if you can still hold even an ounce of compassion for me, knowing everything I am, and everything I’ve done, then give me this. Allow me to finally become what I was born to be.”

“You weren’t born to die, Harrow.”

“I was born to do my duty and serve the Ninth. Together, we can do that. Please,” Harrow whispered, pressing the tip in deeper, blood starting to bead up around the blade. She sounded dreamy, ecstatic, transcendent; a bride on her wedding night; a mystic gifted with a vision of the divine. “Kill me, and ascend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a chapter ready to post tomorrow, so y'all won't have to sit with that cliffhanger for too long. After that, I'll probably take a break from posting until the new year. 
> 
> Overall plan for this fic is that I've got about another 10ish chapters of plot to take us to the equivalent of the end of GtN, and then I do also have plot planned for sort-of-HtN. I'm hoping to get the end of this 'book' out during January, and then there will probably be another little hiatus while I write 'book 2'


	46. Chapter 46

“Harrow, no. _Please_.” Gideon raised her other hand, gripping the blade itself, too terrified to feel the pain as her blood ran down the knife, mingling with Harrow’s own, turning the water around them a grisly pink. “I can’t do it. Even if I wanted to, I can’t. You have to stop.”

“You are the greatest necromancer the Ninth has ever seen, Gideon. You are a walking miracle. You wanted a union with me? This is a union I can give myself to, wholeheartedly. I give you not my hand, not my sword, but my whole self.”

“Harrow, I don’t even know if Palamedes is right! And if he is, I don’t know how it works. I haven’t completed a single challenge; I’ve only seen a couple of theorems, and I haven’t studied them. Not really. If you die now, you die for _nothing_.”

This, at last, seemed to get through to Harrow. Her grip loosened, and Gideon took the knife from her. “Harrow, I want you in my life, you know I do, it's all I've ever wanted. But I _need_ you to be alive and happy. If you don't want to be my bride, or my cavalier, or even my friend, then I _will_ lose you, if I need to, if that’s what it takes. If you can’t bear to be with me and live, then leave - don't die.”

“I would never leave!” Harrow replied, and she put her hand over Gideon’s heart, and stared into her eyes, and Gideon had hope, just for a moment, until Harrow looked away, and withdrew her hand, and continued: “I serve the Reverend Daughter.”

 _Reverend Daughter._ That's all she was to Harrow, and all she would ever be. Harrow did not and could not love Gideon, and there would never be anything more between them than duty. 

Well, if duty was all Harrow would accept from her, then Gideon would give it fully and wholeheartedly. There were no secrets between them - everything had come out now - and more than that, Gideon knew that the best protection she could give Harrow, were they ever to return to the Ninth, was legitimacy. With Harrow as her sworn cavalier primary, not even Pelleamena or Priamhark would have the authority to raise a hand against her.

“Harrow, will you let me swear to you, as your adept?” 

Harrow looked confused, for a moment, as though the proximity they still shared had addled her as much as it had Gideon. Then understanding bloomed across her features, and she nodded. “I, Harrowhark…” 

Gideon cut her off. Trust Harrow to over-complicate something which should be beautifully simple. “Too many words,” Gideon said, confidentially. “Only these: _One flesh, one end_ , beloved.”

She hadn’t meant to say the last word. She really hadn’t, but before she could take it back there came Harrow’s fumbling response: “One flesh - one end.” And then they could say no more.

***

After what seemed like a very, very long time, Gideon said: “Harrow, you need to promise me something.”

Gideon fought the urge to wipe a thumb over Harrow’s temple, tidying away the stringy lock of shadow-coloured hair which hung there, but even as Gideon’s eyes fell upon it, Harrow shuddered, as though she could see the intention in Gideon’s gaze, and Gideon wondered whether this stupid impulse would be the thing which finally brought Harrow to full awareness of how close they were; that Gideon was still naked, and Harrow still knelt between her parted thighs, only the rippling surface of the loathsome water lending Gideon any modesty at all.

Instead, Harrow spoke, through barely parted lips. “Anything.” 

Gideon said, “In the event of my death - Harrow, if something ever does get the better of me - I need you to outlast me, and I need you never to go back to the Ninth. If I die, I need your duty to die with me.”

_“What?”_

“I know it’s such a dick move, I know the Ninth is your home, but Harrow - if you go back without me, I can’t protect you. I won’t have you surviving whatever kills me, only to die at the hands of your own parents.”

“You won’t die.” Harrow said, with absolute faith, that Gideon felt was more than a little unwarranted, given that she’d just narrowly-and-inexplicably avoided death for the - _what, third? No, fourth. Shit, maybe even fifth or sixth_ \- time since arriving at Canaan House. 

“But if I do…” Gideon persisted.

“If you die, then either I will also have perished, or my duty will. A true cavalier should not live to see their necromancer die.”

Harrow took Gideon’s hand, and then made a small moue of distaste at her water-wrinkled fingers. “I should get you back to bed.”

Harrow helped her from the water, and Gideon suffered herself to be patted dry with towels - after everything that had been said, she couldn’t have been more naked before Harrow if she’d been flayed. Perhaps a little of Dulcie’s graciousness was rubbing off on her after all. If Harrow performed her task with uncharacteristic clumsiness, often accidentally brushing Gideon’s skin with trembling, too-hot fingertips, well, this was new to both of them. 

When she was dry, and dressed in a soft over-robe, she did not permit Harrow to lead her to bed, but instead made her way to the next room, settling into a chair by the fireplace there. Though it was not cold in the room, she fed the fire, bit by bit, with kindling and logs, until it blazed fiercely enough for her purposes.

“The noose,” she said to Harrow, at last. It was probably a stupid gesture; if Harrow wanted to harm herself, Canaan House was more than equipped with the means to do so; she could throw herself from a balcony, or into the sea, or seal herself up in the incinerator. Hell, there were probably even more ropes, somewhere, if they hadn’t all decayed. Stupid gesture or not, Gideon couldn’t bear the thought of Harrow spending each day with the weight of her parents’ contempt hung heavy around her hips, or her sleeping beneath it each night. 

Harrow looked as though she were about to argue, but something in Gideon’s face silenced her. Lips pressed bloodless and thin, she nodded, and left, returning with the waterlogged length of coiled and knotted hemp. Gideon noticed the hilt of Harrow’s dagger, peeking out from her boot, but said nothing. She already knew that she could not save Harrow if she did not choose to be saved; she could not leave her cavalier without her weapons.

Carefully, Gideon lowered the noose into the fire. It hissed, resentfully, and spat, and for a moment it seemed that it would douse the flames before it was consumed. Then, beneath the cloud of steam, flames started to lick at the frayed ends of the rope. As though this were some sign, Harrow fell to her knees beside Gideon’s chair, and Gideon placed one hand gently on her shoulder.

They sat like that, unmoving, until the rope was no more than ash, and still longer, until the mighty blaze had burned to embers, and Dominicus had done the same, painting the sky outside the window in reds and golds. Gideon had been out of bed the whole day. She knew that she should be hungry, and more, that she should urge Harrow to eat, but she didn’t protest when Harrow finally ushered her into bed. 

For all the rest of that evening they were furtive and unwilling to let the other one out of their sight for more than a minute, as though distance would compromise everything all over again - talking to each other as though they’d never had the opportunity to talk, but talking about bullshit, about nothing at all, just hearing the rise and fall of the other one’s voice. When Palamedes came to check Gideon’s stitches, and reconnect her drip so that pain would not keep her from sleeping, the silence which fell between Gideon and Harrow then felt strange, as though in the space of a few short hours, silence had ceased to be their natural state. 

That night, Harrow took all her blankets back to the unedifying cavalier bed at the foot of Gideon’s. When they were both lying in bed, in the big warm dark, the edges of Gideon’s consciousness fuzzy with fatigue and drugs, Harrow’s body perpendicular to Gideon’s body, Gideon said: “Did you try to kill Ortus, back on the Ninth?”

Harrow was obviously startled into silence. Gideon pressed: “The duel. The one that Crux interrupted.”

“What? No,” said Harrow. “I might have injured him a little, just enough that he wouldn’t be well enough to make the journey to the First. I never imagined he’d take the threat seriously.”

“How else would he take it? You’re a very serious person, Harrow.”

“I shall be sure to apologise to him, when I may.”

It wasn’t much, but Gideon took this nebulous hint of a plan as hopeful; at least Harrow spoke like she assumed she'd live to speak to Ortus again. Things were not easy between them, but she had Harrow close, and that was all she had ever needed from life; everything else could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See y'all next year!


	47. Chapter 47

The next day, Palamedes came to do his morning check on Gideon alone. If he noticed that the cavalier cot at the end of the bed had been slept in, he didn’t remark on it, just as Gideon did not remark on Palamedes not being accompanied by his cavalier. Even if their rooms were only down the hall, Gideon was surprised that the watchful Camilla had let him venture out without her. Had Sextus insisted that she stay behind to keep an eye on Dulcie, or had Camilla started to trust the Ninth sufficiently to leave Palamedes alone in their company?

Perhaps Camilla was just even more loath to leave Dulcie alone than she was Palamedes. That was a frankly terrifying thought. 

When Sextus was done, and about to leave, Gideon took his hand, stopping him. 

“Palamedes - do you have time to talk?”

He looked at her carefully, though what he read in her expression, she wasn’t sure. 

“Of course - just let me go and tell Cam and Dulcie that I’ll be a little while longer. I don’t want them to worry.” A fond, whimsical, totally un-Sextus smile crossed his face, and Gideon couldn’t help but be happy in response. She’d spent her whole life thinking that the most she could possibly achieve for those around her was to make their lives - and deaths - suck a little less than they otherwise might have, but in waking Dulcie, she’d done so much more than that. She’d never hoped to be capable of causing joy.

She considered suggesting that he actually fetch them, since one of the topics she wanted to discuss was her suspicion that she may actually be able to do more to help the Seventh necromancer, but decided that she wanted to run the idea by Sextus first - no sense raising Dulcie’s hopes if her plan wasn’t viable. She nodded and released his hand, and Palamedes left, closing the door behind him.

“Harrow, can I borrow your map a moment?” Gideon asked, suddenly remembering what Palamedes had said, about being unable to locate one of the theorem rooms, and realising with a faint chagrin that the room in question might be the one she’d concealed behind the tapestry, their first day here. It felt like centuries ago - _surely someone else had found the room by now, and she was worrying for nothing?_

Harrow handed over the map, looking at Gideon curiously as she poured over the symbols, trying to orient herself.

_Well shit._

The room behind the tapestry, near the training room, wasn’t on Harrow’s map. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to explain to Sextus that she’d hidden the room - and for no reason other than ‘I’m a sneaky-bitch Black Vestal’. Well, hopefully she could slip it in with all the other information she was about to reveal; any other day she’d have given her chances of slipping something past Palamedes a solid zero, but with Dulcie here now, he was more than a little distracted. 

“Harrow - help me up?”

By the time Palamedes came back, Gideon was settled comfortably in a chair, Harrow standing to her side. She’d tried to persuade Harrow to sit with them, but she’d refused. Perhaps adhering to strict cavalier protocol was her way of coping with the realities of helping Gideon dress, and the other small intimacies which had been forced upon them. Gideon - well. The only thing Gideon needed to cope with about this situation was the knowledge that it would never matter how close they became, Harrow was not hers.

Before she could dwell too long on this, Palamedes returned, and took a seat.

“You wanted to talk?” he said. He could obviously see her hesitation; he settled back in his seat, getting comfortable. “Take as long as you need.”

“You, uh, may have noticed that I’ve been sort of blowing you off, about the whole bone-fixing stuff you wanted to learn?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” he said, dryly.

“I’ve been realising some things, and I think there’s something…” Gideon wasn’t sure how to phrase it.

“Special?” supplied Harrow

“Wrong.” Gideon corrected. “Something wrong with me. I’m not normal.”

She waited for the inevitable joke, but Sextus only said, mildly, “Okay.”

So she told him. She told him about how injured Naberius had really been, and what she’d done to fix him, how she’d woken Dulcie, and her suspicion that she could help with Dulcie’s cancer, maybe even cure it. She showed him the theorem from the Teacher lab, and let him copy it down - though he was more than a little appalled that she’d disposed of the key, for no good reason that she was willing to mention. And then - though she didn’t explain why or how it had happened - she told him about the nerve gas, about breaking her vow, about all the things that should have killed her and hadn't. “- so… did you mean it?” she finished, “Should I really have died from the injury? Because if that was hyperbole… I just need to know, okay? I need to know how completely fucked up I am.”

“I was not exaggerating the extent of your injuries, believe me. Moreover - I have a hypothesis.”

“You do?”

“When you woke Dulcie - that was the first time you’ve used necromancy, since you were injured?”

“I mean… I tried, with Cytherea. It didn’t amount to much.”

“And then you got up and injured yourself all over again, so it’s hardly a useful comparison. Gideon - since you brought Dulcie back, your healing has accelerated at an astonishing pace. Prior to that, you were progressing at what I would imagine to be a normal rate - though I have no examples to compare you to, since anyone else in your situation would be dead. I believe you have some aptitude - though, I hesitate to characterise it as necromancy - which allows you to cause rapid tissue regeneration.”

He paused, as if expecting Gideon to comment. Gideon had nothing to say. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from Palamedes, but this sort of instant agreement was not it. What she was saying was outlandish - someone as rational as Sextus should dismiss her claims out of hand! Had he already suspected her of being some bizarre walking affront to the laws of nature?

Seeing that she wasn’t going to speak, Palamedes continued. “As a child, you would have used it instinctively; now that your power is more under conscious control, it only activates when you use it. That’s probably the only reason you survived the work you did on Naberius - from what you described, it sounds as though you were siphoning your own soul. Before today, I would have called that impossible, but 'impossible' is perhaps not the most useful word to use around you."

"Okay, but what's so bad about siphoning?"

"Siphoning someone else is perfectly possible, as long as you don’t care overmuch about the person you’re siphoning from, but siphoning yourself, well. Necromancy has built-in fail safes. Siphoning your own soul is the necromantic equivalent of picking yourself up by your own bootstraps, and biting off your own tongue, all at the same time.”

“Biting your… what?” 

“Ever tried it? Biting off your tongue? Your brain won’t let you. You get to a certain point, and can’t go any further. Try it, you’ll see. And it isn’t to do with jaw strength, or anything like that. The human is an omnivorous animal - we wouldn’t have gotten very far if we couldn’t bite through muscle. Soul-siphoning is the same; you instinctively know that the attempt would damage you beyond repair, possibly even kill you, so your brain stops you.”

“So… you’re saying I can do what I do, because my brain is fucking _suicidal_ , or something?”

 _“That would explain a lot”_ muttered Harrow from her spot beside Gideon. Gideon decided not to comment - it wasn’t like she was wrong.

“I wouldn’t put it precisely that way, but you have the gist of it. Still, that’s only part of the puzzle. We still have the question of why you manage to not just _survive_ your frankly idiotic endeavours, but also why you succeed. Take Naberius - if you are describing things accurately, then it wasn’t necromancy you used on him.”

“Yes it was! I told you exactly how I did it, and it was just basic applications of thanergy.”

“Yes - your entire approach made perfect sense… for someone who has never studied either medicine or necromantic theory. Thanergy is an energy source, but you wield it like a _tool_. If I tried what you suggested with Dulcie, I would succeed only in flooding her system with thanergy, which would do nothing to cure her cancer. If I’d wanted to remove the calcification in her brain which was keeping her unconscious, I’d have had to go in surgically.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What I wouldn’t give for basic necromantic theory to be taught in every House - the way the Houses specialise blinkers us, more than it strengthens us.” The words had the feel of a oft-repeated complaint. He scrubbed at his face for a moment, in frustration. “Look. If you stab someone with a sword, you’re using energy - chemical energy, converted into kinetic energy by your muscles, to be precise - but it is the steel, not the energy, which strikes the blow. The way you describe using thanergy, well, it makes about as much sense as you being able to stab someone with no sword at all, just by thinking the kinetic energy into them. Or a construct - when you make a skeletal construct, you take bone, and imbue it with thanergy, yes?” Gideon nodded. “I suspect that with practice you could form a construct using just the thanergy, without the need for a seed-bone to scaffold onto.”

“Huh.” Gideon thought about that a moment. “So you think I really could help Dulcie?”

“We’d need to conduct experiments… but theoretically? If you’re accurately explaining your experience, and I’m correctly interpreting what you’re saying, then the idea is sound.”

“So, when can we start?” Gideon wasn’t crazy about the idea of being a lab rat, but the idea of actually starting to understand things had more than a little appeal, not to mention the prospect of actually healing Dulcinea. And all of it would keep her busy, which sounded amazing after being stuck idle in bed for so long. If Palamedes was right, then performing necromancy - or whatever the hell it was that she did - would also help her own recovery.

“I’ll need some time to construct the parameters for the tests.” Perhaps he saw the disappointment in her face, for he continued, “but I have the key from your winnowing challenge, and now we know where the door is. Care to take a look?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, and congratulations on making it out of 2020!
> 
> I'm planning to go back to daily posting now until I get to the end of Book One, which will be approximately mid-January. Then there'll be another hiatus while I write Book Two. I'm really excited to get working on it, and thanks to all of you for sticking with me!


	48. Chapter 48

Dulcie and Camilla came with them to the shadowy corridor behind the tapestry, Dulcie in a wheeled chair, pushed by Palamedes - seeing it, Gideon thought again of how stupid it was, the way Cytherea had teetered about on those ridiculous crutches, as though she’d been intentionally painting herself as weak and incapable. 

Harrow hovered close, from the moment that they left the Ninth’s quarters. So close that she trod on the hem of Gideon’s robes a couple of times, nearly sending them both toppling to the ground. Gideon didn’t know how to handle this new, overprotective Harrow, this girl with the hunted expression who kept looking at Gideon with the screwed-up eyes of someone who had been handed an egg for safekeeping and was surrounded by egg-hunting snakes. 

When they reached the door, Palamedes held a red key out to Gideon. “Unlock it,” he said.

“Don’t you want the honours?”

“You nearly died for that challenge,” Palamedes said. “It only seems fair.”

Gideon took the key, and paused a moment, drumming her fingers on the bevelled frame of lightless stone, and then she slid the red Response key into the lock.

It fit. The lock clicked open as easily as if it had been kept oiled for the last ten thousand years. Without the slightest creak or groan of hinge, the door swung inward at a push. In deference to Harrow’s newfound overprotectiveness, Gideon waited as Harrow slipped Samael’s chain from her belt, and pulled her rapier free of its scabbard. Harrow nodded, and Gideon walked into the darkness.

It was dark. She did not dare go farther into the quiet and shadowy stillness, thrown into deeper quiet by her cavalier, the Sixth, and Dulcie slipping in behind her and pushing the massive door shut. They stood in the room and smelled the age of it: the dust, the chemicals hanging in the air. You could almost smell the darkness.

Then, a slight click, and a narrow beam of light illuminated the darkness. Camilla had apparently thought to bring a hand-torch. She shone it around the doorframe. Gideon expected her to find a lantern: she found something else, and from the wall there came a much louder click. Electric lights blared to life overhead, throwing the dark and lonely room into knife-sharp relief.

Like the other room they’d been in, it was a study, left crystallised by someone who had one day stood up and never come back to the place where they must have worked for years. Unlike the other lyctor laboratory Gideon had seen, this long, square, spacious apartment it was brightly lit rather than cave-like. A long rail of electric lamps threw spotlights on important points in the room’s geography. One end of the room was occupied by a laboratory: stained, scoured-laminate benches, and shelves and shelves of notes in leather-bound books or ring binders. The big metal sink and the scrubbing-up brush looked strange against the walls, which were inlaid with bones. 

Palamedes had already drifted to the laboratory where the table with the theorem stone was located. As Gideon watched, he started copying down the theorem. Gideon considered doing the same - but they were working together. _No sense both of them making a copy, right?_

The room had been split into three main parts - there was the laboratory, and then a broad space where the furniture had been moved out of the way for an empty stone floor. The wall had a sword rack, and the sword rack still held two lonely rapiers, gleaming as though they’d been filed and whetted an hour before. Camilla wandered over to the training floor, pushing Dulcie ahead of her, and so Gideon made her way to the third part of the room.

It was a raised platform with polished wooden stairs. The wood here was not so degraded as in the rest of Canaan House - this lightless, shut-off room must have preserved it, or otherwise somehow been stopped in time. The hairs on the back of Gideon’s neck had risen when the lights came on, and they hadn’t gone back down, as if her intrusion might well tempt time back to claim its grave goods.

With Harrow at her side, she found herself climbing the stairs and staring at a sweetly banal and domestic sight: a bookcase, a low table, a squashy armchair, and two beds. On the table was a teapot and two cups that lay abandoned forever. The two beds were close to each other - if you lay in one, you could stretch out and touch whoever was sleeping in the other, provided you had a long arm - separated only by a nightstand.

On the nightstand was another lamp, and debris that people had never cleared up. The beds had been made, but someone had left a pair of extremely worn slippers beneath one, a crumpled piece of flimsy next to the nightstand. 

Gideon picked up the latter, and jumped, as Palamedes said: “anything interesting?” She hadn’t realised he’d already finished copying down the theorem, hadn’t heard him approach. 

Gideon handed over the crumpled flimsy. Palamedes carefully smoothed it open, and stared at it, an odd expression on his face, before wordlessly handing it back to Gideon. She looked at the words written there.

_ut we all know the sad_

_\+ trying realit_

_is that this will remain incomplete t_

_the last. He can’t fix my_

_deficiencies her_

_ease give Gideon my_

_congratulations, howev_

“Is that,” Gideon hesitated, not sure what she was trying to ask. “Is it - I mean - is it real?”

Palamedes looked at her. “It’s nearly ten thousand years old, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, I’m not,” she said. “So… what the fuck, basically.”

“The ultimate question,” he agreed, returning his attention to the flimsy. “Can I borrow this? I’d like to look at it properly.”

Gideon considered, and then handed it over, hurriedly, as she noticed Camilla helping Dulcie up the wooden stairs. “Don’t show it to anyone,” Gideon said, without really knowing why. Something about her name being on this ancient piece of garbage felt as dangerous as a live grenade. “Please.”

Palamedes nodded, and slipped the flimsy between the pages of his notebook.

Gideon was tiring; so was Dulcie. They decided that Dulcie would return with the Ninth to their quarters, while Palamedes and Camilla remained to study the room further. Gideon found it was actually easier, walking while pushing Dulcie’s chair, as she could rest some of her weight on it. When they got back, Harrow moved aside some furniture so that she could train, and Dulcie dozed lightly on one of the couches. 

Gideon turned her attentions inwards, thinking more on what Palamedes had said, and wondering if there was more she could do to speed the healing of her stomach. It was more than frustrating being barely able to walk; she was ready to be better. Besides, if she was going to try and help Dulcie, then she needed to practice.

Gideon got to work.


	49. Chapter 49

Gideon came to in time for dinner and - excitingly - though she felt a little drained, she also felt hungry, for the first time in a long time. If she was correct in what she’d managed to achieve over the past few hours, then maybe she could actually go to the dining room, and eat real food, amongst other exhilarating things she’d been missing out on.

Dinner that evening was almost like the early days at Canaan House. Dulcie took the spare seat next to Palamedes, so they had a full table for the first time. Gideon wasn’t sure how much Abigail and Magnus had explained to the Fourth about recent events, but they didn’t seem at all surprised by Dulcie - one less thing for Gideon to worry about. 

And so, over the next few days, they fell into a rhythm again, much as they had in those first weeks. The only difference being that their mornings of study revolved not around the facility, but consisted of Gideon and Palamedes sequestered in the Ninth’s quarters, as she worked through the different trials and experiments he set to try and map her capabilities. To his credit, he never made her feel like a lab rat.

Gideon, however, chafed at the pace he set. Day by day, Dulcie faded, and Gideon began to fret that - in being so cautious, Palamedes was actually putting her at greater risk. It felt like a race between the progression of Dulcie’s illness and Gideon’s expertise; one she wasn’t sure she was winning.

Despite her impatience, Gideon knew her limits - stretching her necromantic and - other - capabilities as far as they would go each morning only worked if she gave herself the rest of the day to recharge. She’d do nobody any good by working herself sick. So in the afternoons, Gideon carried on training alongside the cavaliers, and teaching Coronabeth, who was making remarkable progress. She had the makings of an excellent swordswoman, and had honestly been wasted - was still wasted - on the stupid pretense of being a necromancer. Ianthe, they saw infrequently, though she was sometimes to be found skulking in dark corners. 

The Eighth, Gideon barely saw at all, as they immediately exited any room she was in. Had she been more petty and less busy, she’d have considered camping out in the dining rooms, to see just how long they’d starve themselves before deigning to share a meal with her.

Gideon and the pairs she’d come to think of as her friends also studied the theorems, sitting around one of the larger library tables in the evening. With the theorem they’d obtained from the laboratory over by the training room, and the one Gideon had copied down from the lab where she found the binder of photos, they now had six of the eight. Of the last two, one key had been gone already before Palamedes and Camilla had completed the challenge, and the other - if it had not already been claimed - lay at the end of a challenge they refused to attempt. Still, they could extrapolate somewhat from the challenges themselves, and were gradually building up a picture of the megatheorem. A picture which seemed to align horribly and perfectly with Palamedes’ suspicions.

Though they had all agreed, early on, that if the cost of lyctorhood was as it seemed, they would none of them ascend - something Palamedes was very firm on, before he was willing to even entertain the notion of studying the theorems as a group - they knew that at least one lyctor had wanted to kill them all. If there was a risk of another coming along to finish the job Cytherea had failed at, then they needed to understand their enemy, and so they studied.

As Harrow saw the other cavaliers joining in - most often Camilla, but Magnus and Jeannemary would sometimes venture an opinion or observation as well - she began to speak up more herself, and her insights were shrewd and incisive. She began to form a friendship with Palamedes that was almost as strong as her bond with Jeannemary, and just as impenetrable. Gideon wasn’t stupid - she followed the theorems as easily as the others - she just didn’t have the love of abstracts and hypotheticals that Palamedes and Harrow did. Much to Gideon’s chagrin, Harrow was also far better versed in the ‘basic necromantic theory’ that Palamedes so bemoaned Gideon’s lacking. Harrow, it turned out, had read every single book in the Drearburh library, most of them multiple times, whereas Gideon had been far more selective, reading only what interested her.

One evening, as she lay in the darkness, Harrow curled up in the cavalier cot at the foot of her bed, a thought occurred to Gideon.

“Harrow?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t remember a lot, from when I got hurt, the Imaging and Response, you know?”

“How could I forget?” Harrow said, acidly. Gideon regretted bringing up what was obviously still a painful subject for her cavalier, and almost decided to drop the topic, but gritted her teeth and ploughed ahead.

“I’ve been trying to not think about it, mostly. I know that what I saw and what I felt wasn’t any of my business, and you know I never intended to violate your privacy that way.”

“Were you planning on meandering towards a point, any time soon, or should I go to sleep and see if you’ve managed to get there by the morning?”

They’d come a long way over the past weeks, but they were still oh-so-careful around each other. They talked every night - something about the dark hush of the room, the dreamlike calm of those last moments before sleeping, seemed to encourage the sharing of confidences - but they rarely talked about anything real. Hearing Harrow’s voice taking on that old bitterness, the wariness, Gideon was again tempted to shut up, fearing that Harrow would walk out as she’d been doing for so much of their lives.

“Your back. I know it didn’t heal right - I know it still hurts you. I want to try and fix it.”

“You think I need fixing?”

“That’s not what I said, and you know it. I know you’ve got that whole stupid thing, where you think you deserve for everything to be awful all the time, because of…” Gideon trailed off, taking a deep breath before continuing. “And you know that I think it’s idiotic. Look, I’m not going to make you do something you don’t want to, but even if you can’t accept good things for yourself, you must admit that the scarring is affecting your flexibility, and your speed. And it would help Dulcie. I can only learn so much from healing fish - mammals don’t work the same. Just think about it, okay?”

Harrow was silent for so long that Gideon thought she’d fallen asleep, or perhaps slyly smothered herself with her pillow to avoid the conversation. Eventually, though, she said: “I don’t want Sextus to know.”

“Know what?”

“Know any of it. It… would reflect poorly on the Ninth.”

Well - Gideon wasn’t sure if Harrow even realised the magnitude of this moment. This was the closest she’d ever come to stating aloud that what had happened to her was wrong. 

“Just us then. No one needs to know.”

Gideon heard Harrow’s deep inhale. She held the breath for a moment, and then…

“Okay.”

***

The next day, Gideon was antsy and distracted, focused more on the task to come than on what was going on around her. Palamedes was clearly irked by her lack of concentration, and they got very little done that morning; he left early to spend time with Camilla and Dulcie instead.

Even Coronabeth noticed that something was up, when Gideon almost missed a block, and had to scramble to avoid a nasty blow from Coronabeth’s training sword. They practiced individually for the rest of the afternoon. After dinner, Gideon excused herself and Harrow from joining the others to continue with their study of the theorems. 

When they were back in the Ninth’s rooms, Gideon led Harrow over to sit by the fire. 

“We should talk this over, first.” She said, as Harrow looked expectantly at her.

“Why? I already agreed.”

“I want to discuss the process with you; there are a couple of ways I can go about this, and I know which way I’d prefer, but… it has to be your decision.”

“Okay…” Harrow sounded unconvinced, but willing to listen at least.

“I think we’ll get the best results if I remove the scar tissue altogether, and then create fresh, healthy skin to replace it. The thing is, it’s going to hurt. Not as badly as the initial injury, and as little as I can manage, but the nerves will be exposed while I’m regrowing the skin and…”

“I can handle it,” Harrow said, back becoming - if such a thing was possible - even straighter, sitting even taller. Where she’d seemed anxious and uncertain about the idea of Gideon helping her, the prospect of intense agony seemed only to strengthen her resolve. Gideon had known that Harrow was desperate for any opportunity to prove herself, but this level of self-destructive stubbornness was another thing entirely. 

“There’s an alternative,” Gideon said, though she already suspected that Harrow wouldn’t be interested in her alternative. “I could cut off the nerves before we start. You wouldn’t feel a thing, then, and I  _ should _ be able to get everything connected back up afterwards…”

“Should?”

“I really think I can, but… nerves are tricky.”

“So, there’s a chance I could lose sensation permanently?”

“I mean… I don’t think it would be permanent. If I get it wrong, I can practice, and study more, until I learn how to fix it.”

“No. I’m only doing this so that I can be the cavalier you deserve” Gideon saw the very tips of Harrow’s ears flush dark, and she looked away, “I mean, that the Ninth deserves. There’s no point fixing one problem if it risks causing another. I have to be perfect.”

“Then let me ask Sextus for some of the stuff he used on me when I was hurt.”

“You said you wouldn’t tell him!”

“I won’t - I’ll just, ask for the meds.”

“He’s too smart; he might figure it out. You don’t need to coddle me, Griddle. I’m not afraid of pain. Just get on with it.”


	50. Chapter 50

And so again, they ended up in the bathtub. 

This time, it was empty, and Gideon, at least, was fully clothed. But mess was almost inevitable, and neither of them wanted to worry about cleaning blood and lymph and other associated detritus from the carpets afterwards. For the same reason, Harrow removed her robes and shirt, sitting between Gideon’s legs, with her bared back to her.

For the first time, Gideon saw the extent of the damage, and she was appalled that Harrow had lived with this for so long. Angry-looking bands of raised scar tissue - as thick as Gideon’s thumb in places - wrapped around Harrow’s back, extending around her ribs, and over her shoulders. It was no wonder that Harrow’s mobility had been affected. When Gideon placed a hand gently over one of Harrow’s scapulae, she felt tiny scabbed-over places where the skin had torn, and wondered if the scarring had been getting progressively worse over the years, as Harrow mercilessly pushed herself, ripping the scars time and again, until they grew back thicker and knottier than ever.

“I’ll work on a small area at a time, to make it easier.” Gideon said, half-hoping that Harrow would change her mind and let Gideon block off her nerves. Everything within Gideon was screaming that hurting Harrow was the last thing she ever wanted to do, but Harrow had agreed to this. She wanted this. And Gideon’s mind couldn’t stop drifting back to her time in Harrow’s mind, and the awful, exhausted acceptance of the pain which had been with her, waking and sleeping, for almost half her life. Gideon didn’t want Harrow to have to live that way anymore.

Then Gideon had an idea. Tentatively, she thought back to Imaging and Response, trying to remember how it had felt, what had happened, before everything had been pain and blood. When she thought she had it, she reached out and…

_There!_

It only lasted for a moment - the rush of success was so much of a distraction that it broke the link, but for that moment, she’d been there, inside Harrow, able to feel - well, more or less - Gideon’s hand on her back. For all Harrow’s insistence that she wasn’t willing to risk loss of sensation, she’d actually already lost a lot. The scar tissue wasn’t quite numb, but feeling penetrated it oddly, the presence of Gideon’s hand was more a prickling, itching sort of pressure than anything else, with no real definition. 

_Okay._ Now she just had to work out how to maintain the contact while also working on healing Harrow’s back, and she’d be able to monitor how much pain she was causing, rather than having to rely on Harrow to say if it became too much. She reached out and made contact again, and…

“Stop.”

“What?” Gideon didn’t let go of the link, so she felt the heat as blood rushed to Harrow’s face, though she could not interpret the reason for it. Embarrassment? Shame? Anger?

“Get out of my head. You think I can’t feel you blundering around in here, you gigantic oaf?”

"I didn't think you'd notice," Gideon said, withdrawing now that she knew for certain she'd been found out.

"I could hardly fail to. What are you even doing? The last thing I need is for you to be distracted! I've yet to see any indication that your tiny pebble of a brain has the capacity to hold more than one thought at a time. Did you really think that you could do this at all - let alone without me noticing - while you're mucking around doing whatever it is you plan to do?"

Gideon couldn't really focus on Harrow's words. Instead, one hundred percent of her attention was fixed on keeping eye contact with Harrow - which sort of suggested that there may be some logic behind Harrow's insults, but that was besides the point - for her cavalier had turned around to face her, the better for Gideon to appreciate the truly impressive scowl Harrow was directing at her - and Gideon was having the most difficult time not letting her eyes drop to Harrow's bare shoulders, the arch of her collarbones, and lower.

Did Harrow not care that she sat before Gideon, completely bare-chested? Sure, she'd seen Gideon without a stitch on her many times now, but that was different. There was protocol, and precedent, and medical necessity for that. And really, Gideon wasn't exactly shy about her body. Her only real concern about the whole thing had been that she didn't want to upset Harrow with her nudity. 

Harrow never showed an inch of flesh, if she could help it. She even wore long-sleeved shirts and trousers to train in. Gideon remembered the faintly-scandalised intimacy she'd felt at simply seeing Harrow's bare _hands_. How could Harrow face her so boldly now?

Then, seeing the set of Harrow's jaw, Gideon realised that Harrow wasn't presenting Gideon with her bared chest - she was hiding her back. It was nothing to Harrow, for Gideon to see the strong, healthy muscles of her chest and stomach; what terrified Harrow was anyone seeing her weak, and vulnerable. It had been when Gideon had touched her scars that Harrow felt truly naked, and, like the absolute moron she was, Gideon had compounded that by peeking, unbidden, into Harrow's mind.

"Fuck, Harrow. I'm sorry... I didn't mean.. I just..."

"I thought you trusted me." Harrow said, sounding more hurt than angry. At last, she crossed her arms over her chest, though Gideon thought the gesture had more to do with comfort, and possibly defensiveness, than modesty. 

"Harrow, I _do_ trust you. I trust you with my life, absolutely. I just... don't trust you with yours. I don't trust you to value yourself as highly as I do. I don't trust you to tell me to stop, if I'm hurting you too much, and Harrow - I don't want to hurt you at _all_."

"And you think you're a better arbiter of how much is _too much_ for me? You're soft, Griddle - and I know it's not your fault! I'm _glad_ you haven't had to suffer like I have, I really am, but... I _have_ suffered, and I know my limits far better than you ever will _Reverend Daughter._ "

Gideon couldn't help but laugh then, a nasty, caustic little laugh.

"You think I haven't suffered, just because I'm the heir? You think just because your parents don't beat me before the altar, that they never beat me? You think that because my hurts were private, they were somehow less painful? I never understood why they were so cruel; I guess I thought it was my own fault, that I just wasn't good enough. I know better now, but... Harrow, if you think I don't know pain, then you haven't been paying attention. And if you're worried that I can't work through the pain, then stop worrying, because I can. Your mother made certain of that. Do you know that any time I made a mistake fixing a bone, she'd give me more 'practice' by breaking one of mine?"

"Griddle, I didn't..." Harrow reached out, and Gideon wanted to flinch away, seeing in that moment - all unwilling - the tiny ways in which Harrow resembled her mother; seeing Pelleamena reaching for her instead. But she steeled herself as Harrow took her hand, and there was no pain, only the slender, calloused fingers holding hers, the sensation too unfamiliar to be altogether comforting. "I didn't know."

"Well maybe you would have known, if you hadn't spent the last decade avoiding me." Gideon didn't let go of Harrow's hand, but she couldn't stop the hint of bitterness which crept into her words. She looked down at their joined hands, unable to look Harrow in the face, trying to let herself be soothed by the sight of their entangled fingers. She didn't need to rehash old hurts; she shouldn't have brought this up. She understood why Harrow had run from her, and hadn't Harrow suffered enough without Gideon unloading all this baggage on her now?

Gideon wanted to be the bigger person. She wanted to be a person who could take all the hurt that Harrow had caused her, and let it go. But she couldn't. She’d forgiven Harrow, but she couldn’t forget that it wasn’t only Harrow who’d suffered through these years alone. Even if she understood why, that didn't heal the old wounds. Gideon was still hurting, and she was still scared, and if she truly wanted there to be a future for them - any kind of future - then it wouldn't come from pushing away her pain and letting it fester until it ate away at her completely.

If she really did trust Harrow, then she had to trust that they could get past this together. She had to trust that Harrow would care that she'd hurt Gideon, just as Gideon still burned for all the times she'd hurt Harrow. Treating Harrow as an equal didn't just mean elevating her - it meant holding her as accountable as Gideon held herself. 

Harrow hadn't replied.

"It isn't that I don't understand; we were children.” Gideon said at last. “Children make mistakes. But we have to do better now. We have to be better now. We do things as a team, okay? You and me, Gideon and Harrow, against the world - not against each other. I need you not to run away when things are hard."

"I won't." The words had all the solemnity of a vow, but Gideon needed more.

"Promise you won't leave me again."

"I swear."

And Harrow leaned in, and pressed her lips to Gideon's, just for a single, chaste moment, staring into her eyes the whole time. "I swear." She said again, face still so close that their lips brushed as she spoke, and Gideon breathed deep, taking Harrow's words into herself, feeling tears pricking at her eyes. 

Then Harrow turned and sat again between Gideon's knees, so Gideon could see only her shorn hair, her slender neck, the warped, mutilated ruin of her skin.

"I'll tell you to stop, if I need you to, but my mind is my own. Stay out."

Gideon took a moment to centre herself, swallowing down the lump in her throat, and blinking away tears. Then she got to work.


	51. Chapter 51

Harrow stopped her twice; the first time Gideon suspected that she didn’t actually need a break at all, but was simply demonstrating to Gideon that she would. The second time, though, Harrow was pale, sweating, and trembling - Gideon had just remade the sensitive skin over her lumbar and sacral vertebrae, which would have been the most painful part of the whole process.

As Gideon took her hands away from Harrow’s blood-slicked skin, Harrow lay back against Gideon’s chest, Gideon’s shirt a thin layer of blood-sodden fabric, clinging to both of them. Gideon hesitated for a long moment, and then slowly wrapped her arms around Harrow, hoping that she wasn’t crossing any lines. Harrow instantly clung to her, fingers icy and desperate, digging into Gideon’s forearms in a way she suspected would leave bruises, but Gideon had been truthful when she’d told Harrow she was no stranger to pain, and this pain she would endure gladly, if she could decrease Harrow’s own, by even the smallest measure. 

After a time, Harrow’s shivering subsided, and her breathing slowed, until their chests rose and fell in easy unison. Harrow pulled herself upright, and Gideon let her go. 

“Finish it,” Harrow commanded. So Gideon did.

By the time she was done, they were both exhausted, but Gideon was satisfied, opening her eyes to see smooth, even skin. A healthy ochre, with the slight shininess of new skin. Harrow turned around to face Gideon and stretched, experimentally. 

Despite the lines of pain and exhaustion the long hours of healing had drawn in Harrow’s face, Gideon thought that she’d never looked more beautiful than she did in that moment. Harrow’s eyes were wide with excitement, and for once, she looked no older than her seventeen years. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said, wonderingly, reaching her arms high over her head and letting out a small, involuntary squeal of delight. This time, Gideon had no difficulty keeping her eyes on Harrow’s face. She couldn’t imagine ever wanting to look away. “It doesn’t hurt at _all._ ”

“Well… that was the point,” Gideon said with a smile. “It’s late. We should get some sleep.”

For a moment, Harrow’s mouth took on a mulish twist, and Gideon suspected that Harrow had been planning to get out her sword, and take some time to enjoy her new freedom from pain and ease of movement. But when she tried to climb to her feet, Harrow lurched, nearly falling, before Gideon reached up and caught her. 

“Sleep?” She suggested again, and this time Harrow nodded. They were both dripping with sweat, and sodden with Harrow’s blood. Laboriously, they stripped, and took it in turns to wipe themselves down as thoroughly as they could manage with a washcloth and a sinkful of hot water, too tired for even the pretense of modesty. Gideon wasn’t sure how they made it into the bedroom, since each was leaning on the other, but eventually they got there. Gideon took one look at the coarse wool blankets over the cavalier cot, and led Harrow instead to her own bed. Harrow tried to protest, but Gideon cut her off.

“I slept in a cot for most of my life; one more night won’t kill me. I worked hard on that skin, but it’s still brand new, and it’s going to be very sensitive for a while.”

“I’m not some wilting princess, Griddle!” 

In answer, Gideon dragged her fingernails lightly over the fresh skin on Harrow’s shoulder; Harrow shuddered so hard that she nearly fell, and had to brace herself against the bedpost. 

“Point taken,” Harrow said, and she didn’t object as Gideon pulled aside the soft covers and directed Harrow to climb in. With Harrow safely situated, Gideon made her way slowly across the room to turn out the light,before heading back to the cot at the end of the bed. Truly, she was so fatigued that she could probably have slept quite easily on a bed of nails, or hot coals; sleeping in the cot would be no trial at all. 

Before she could lay down, Harrow’s voice came softly through the darkness.

“Griddle? Would you… I mean, you don’t have to sleep in the cot. This bed is big enough for like, six.”

“It’s fine, Harrow, I’ll be fine here.”

“I’m cold.”

“I can put more wood on the fire?”

Harrow’s strangely timid tone shifted into something more familiar: exasperation. 

“Griddle, will you please just get in the bed? I haven’t slept in a bed before, and it’s strange. I feel a bit like it’s going to eat me.”

“Yeah - I felt the same, my first night here. Wait - you weren’t sleeping in the bed in the other room you stayed in, while I was sick?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

A pause.

“It’s stupid. Superstitious.”

“But?”

“But I was worried that sleeping in the adept’s bed would be an ill omen, and if I stayed in my place, in the cavalier’s cot, then I’d stay a cavalier - you’d live.”

“That is superstitious… but, also kind of sweet. Careful, Harrow, at this rate, I might get the impression that you actually like me.”

“For the Emperor’s sake, Griddle! You’re completely insufferable.”

“And yet you insist on suffering me - you probably ought to talk to someone about that.”

There were sounds of movement, and then Gideon was thumped in the chest by something soft.

“Did you just throw a pillow at me?”

“What if I did? You deserved it.”

“Nice aim,” Gideon had to admit, she probably couldn’t have done the same, dark as it was in the room.

“The next thing I throw won’t be a pillow; get in the damn bed. Unless…” and Harrow became timid again, “you don’t want to.”

Gideon sat gently on the edge of the bed.

“Harrow - I think I’ve been pretty clear about how I feel. I don’t think I could possibly have been clearer. And you were clear too - that’s great. I’m glad we both know where we stand, even if you don’t feel the same as I do. But… are you really comfortable sharing a bed with me, knowing how I feel? I mean, I won’t - I wouldn’t take advantage - but still.”

“I trust you. And… you’re right. The new skin is sensitive. It’s a lot, and I know it’s stupid, because I’m stronger now than I was, but I’m not used to all this sensation. I feel kind of raw, and… assailable.” _Vulnerable_ , Gideon thought. The forbidden word. The one thing Harrow could never admit to being - although she’d come remarkably close, just then. “I think I’ll feel safer if you’re here.” 

Quickly, leaving neither of them time to dwell on what she’d just said, Harrow continued, “and I _am_ cold.”

Gideon lay down in the bed, careful to stay just far enough away from Harrow that they weren’t touching. A care which proved pointless when Harrow instantly snuggled up to her, tucking her head under Gideon’s chin. Harrow was curled up, foetally, and her calves lay against Gideon’s thighs.

“Fuck, you really are cold.”

“Is this okay?” Harrow asked, and it sounded like her teeth were chattering. Gideon wrapped her arms around Harrow, pulling the small, shivering bundle closer, and trying not to think about how neither of them were wearing anything at all - or, if she did think of it, then it was only to think that it was probably good; didn’t body heat transfer more easily, from skin-to-skin contact?

“Of course. Shit! What would be the point of healing you, if I let you freeze to death afterwards? I guess what I do puts a lot of strain on the body I’m healing, not just my own. We’ll have to remember that, for Dulcie.”

If Gideon had realised in that moment that Harrow actually hadn’t ever been terribly clear about her feelings towards Gideon - only about her feelings regarding herself, and her own worth, and her conviction that she was not deserving of love - then she might have read jealousy into the way Harrow laid her ice-cold fingers on Gideon’s bare stomach the moment she mentioned Dulcinea Septimus. 

But Gideon had not realised that before, and was too tired to realise it now. She hissed at the sudden cold, and gritted her teeth, waiting for Harrow to start warming up so that they could both sleep.

Gideon was nearly all the way asleep when Harrow’s fingers began to move over the skin of her stomach, exploring.

“You still have the scar,” Harrow said, her voice as sleep-slurred as Gideon’s brain felt. “Why don’t you get rid of it? You could.”

“It’s to remind me.”

“Of what?”

“That you fought for me, even when you had no reason to trust me, or even like me, or even think I could be saved; you still fought for me.”

Gideon was asleep before Harrow could respond.


	52. Chapter 52

Gideon had never been more grateful that Harrow was a habitually early riser than she was that next morning. Where she’d been too exhausted, the night before, to dwell overmuch on the feeling of Harrow’s skin against hers, she woke up feeling refreshed, alert, and already half-way to a panic attack, before she realised she was alone in the bed - only a small warm divot in the mattress beside her to indicate that the whole thing had been more than a dream. 

Harrow was awake, dressed, and practicing with her rapier. Gideon lay still for a while, just watching her, taking a simple pleasure in the fluid ease of her movement, the joy on her face. Eventually Harrow noticed that she was awake.

“Oh thank goodness you’re up. I’m starving! Can we go to breakfast soon?”

Harrow looked incandescent; like she might fly down the hallways to the dining room, rather than walking. Gideon found herself wondering, as she hauled herself out of bed, how much of Harrow’s sourness and hostility and reticence had been merely the weight of constant, unending pain? How differently might things have gone, if the Ninth hadn’t been so determined to shun it’s ‘failed’ daughter that she’d never been given even the most basic care?

No sense dwelling on it now. Gideon took a quick sonic to clean away the remaining grime from the night before - her stitches having been finally taken out a few days earlier - and pulled on clean robes, before heading down to breakfast.

They were very late, having slept until almost midday, and the room was empty. Gideon said nothing when Harrow called for seconds, and ploughed through her second plate of plain gruel with more enthusiasm than Gideon had ever seen her direct towards food, even when she’d spent days fasting. And Harrow _talked_ , idle chatter between mouthfuls, the way she did with Jeannemary, as though Gideon were a confidante; as though they were possessed of an easy, unstrained friendship, and could talk even when they did not have the darkness of night to cover their words. Gideon didn’t know whether it was the healing, or something else entirely, but it seemed as though they’d turned a corner, and Gideon could only pray that she wouldn’t do anything to ruin this new closeness.

The next few days were the happiest of Gideon’s life. Though outwardly little had changed, Harrow’s newfound joy in life cast everything in a new light. Harrow didn’t return to the cavalier cot; without any discussion, they spent the nights curled together, taking the kind of simple comfort in each other that they hadn’t since they were children. Despite Harrow’s perpetually cold feet, and unreasonably sharp elbows - of which she seemed possessed of a dozen, at least, from the feel of it - Gideon slept better than she could ever remember having slept, and only started to realise how exhausted she’d been for years, when that haze of exhaustion finally started to lift. 

With Palamedes’ agreement, they finally spoke to Dulcie, explaining that there was a chance Gideon could cure her cancer, and fix the damage it had done to her ravaged body - though he cautioned that her body’s inclination towards sickness would always be there, and there was the possibility that the cancer would come back. Dulcie’s only response was to grin, showing each one of those pointed white teeth, and say: “Well, then I suppose we shall all have to remain friends forever!”

With what Gideon had learned from healing Harrow, she knew better than to try and cure Dulcie all in one go. Instead, Gideon spent a brief time with Dulcie each night, before she slept. Over the course of a week, Gideon hunted down the rogue, bloated clusters of malignant cells, until for two nights in a row she could find none. After that, she moved on to more complex work; burrowing down into Dulcie’s bones, deep into the marrow, seeking out the source of the defective blood, and extinguishing that in turn. Finally, she moved through the whole of Dulcie’s body, finding the choked, congealed blood vessels and clearing them. 

Dulcie’s cough was worse than ever, that night, but Palamedes assured Gideon that he’d expected as much - Dulcie’s body needed to purge itself, and would be fine once it had. She slept all the next day, and most of the day after, waking only long enough to drink some clear broth. Gideon tried not to fret, but on the third day Palamedes banned her from the sickroom. 

“Come fight me,” Harrow suggested when they were out in the corridor. “It will take your mind off it.”

Gideon couldn’t deny that she was spoiling for a good fight. Coronabeth was progressing nicely, but she was still a beginner, and Gideon hadn’t had a bout she could sink her teeth into since the last time she’d fought with Aiglamene. But…

“You use a rapier. It’s hardly a fair match.”

“I know it isn’t fair, but don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.” Harrow grinned, wickedly. 

“ _You’ll_ go easy on _me_? I could snap you like a twig!”

“You have to catch me first.” Harrow winked. _She actually goddamn winked_. Gideon thought she might need to lie down, right there in the hallway. “I’ve spent my whole life dedicated to only this - you split your attention too much. You’ll never be the swordswoman I am… though, I’d be lying if I said you weren’t good - I’ve watched you with that idiot from the Third.”

_Harrow had been watching her?_

“Right! You’re on.”

Gideon had felt a little odd, the first time she’d practiced with her sword after Abigail had revealed that it was haunted - and by her mother no less - but she’d gotten over it quickly. Her mother had _always_ been in there - the only change was that now Gideon knew. She told herself that perhaps her mother was aware of her, and was proud - the nuns had said she’d had the body of a fighter, all corded muscle and calloused fingers.

Abigail was working on a more powerful summoning ritual since the first couple they’d tried hadn’t been successful, but Abigail remained undaunted, and said she’d expected that a revenant strong enough to persist for almost twenty years in an inanimate object - a feat that was practically without precedent, though Abigail did mutter fondly about an exceptionally stubborn revenant she'd once exorcised from a vending machine - would need something pretty special. Abigail did, in fact, look as though all her birthdays had come at once, and Magnus had joked that Abigail’s obsession with her mother was so strong that Gideon ought to start calling them her step-parents.

Seeing the stricken look on Gideon’s face, he’d instantly taken back the words - but said, gently, that if she ever did need a touch of parental guidance and affection, that they both adored her, and would have adopted her in a heartbeat, if such a thing were possible. 

Gideon had said nothing, but she thought a lot, and the next morning when they'd met in the corridor, Gideon gave Magnus a quick, tight hug, and whispered _thank you_ , before awkwardly clearing her throat, and dashing on ahead to breakfast. Now, Magnus would sometimes ruffle her hair when he passed, as he did with Isaac and Jeannemary, and Abigail would pat her hand, or squeeze her shoulders in a quick, one-armed hug, as they sat around in the evenings studying the lyctor theorems. Sometimes, they’d do the same with Harrow; Gideon didn’t know what conversation had passed between them, or when, but she was glad that Harrow had allowed that kindness into her life. 

Now Gideon’s hands were steady around the hilt of her blade, as she stood in the empty training room, facing Harrow. Harrow smiled broadly at her - an expression which was coming to fit more naturally on a face no longer drawn with pain, exhaustion, and hunger. 

“Go!”

Harrow was shockingly fast. Gideon shouldn’t have been surprised - she’d seen Harrow fight before, and seen in her training how much more nimble she’d become now that she had full range of motion in her arms. Gideon was surprised, though; she barely managed to raise her sword in time to block Harrow’s first strike, and had to clumsily dodge out of the way to avoid Harrow’s attempt to foul her two-hander on the chain.

Samael’s chain, Gideon quickly realised, was the real threat; the rapier was almost just a distraction. Had it not been for the chain, Gideon thought she might have won quickly and easily. As it was, Harrow kept her on the defensive, scrambling to keep up, collecting various small nicks and bruises, though nothing serious enough for her to end the match. 

Fighting Harrow was nothing like fighting the solid, indomitable Aiglamene. Harrow was like a dervish, like a force of nature. For the first time, Gideon started to really understand, and respect, the cavalier style of fighting. Gideon had more power in her two-hander, yes, but that power did her no good when she could not land a blow. Harrow darted, ducked, feinted - it was a technique which relied on always being one step ahead, on keeping track of her own blade, and her opponent’s, on her off hand, and her feet, and a million other things, all at once. Gideon was glad she’d never tried to train with a rapier; it wouldn’t have suited her, when what she craved from her swordplay was that focus that came from becoming no more than an extension of the sword in her hands. 

If Gideon hadn’t already loved Harrow, she’d have fallen hard then, seduced by the quick, savage grin whenever she landed a blow - little more than a flash of teeth - and the cocky tilt of her head whenever Gideon fell for a feint. Gideon suspected that Harrow could have ended the match whenever she wanted to; Harrow had been right. However skilled Gideon was, Harrow had simply had more time to dedicate to her craft, and was by far the superior swordswoman. And yet, Harrow kept the match going, almost playfully, teasing Gideon out, giving her just enough space to pull off a fancy move or two, something to really get her teeth into, but almost never letting her score a touch. 

Gideon didn't realise how much ground she'd been giving up until she took a step back and found herself backed against the wall. They were both breathing hard, running with sweat, and Gideon realised that her face hurt from grinning. _Fuck, she hadn't had this much fun in... well, ever._ She didn't back down, even pinned down, with the end in sight, but kept fighting, pushing to keep this going as long as she could, but finally, without room to manoeuvre, she found herself unable to deflect a blow, and Harrow brought the very tip of her rapier to rest over Gideon's heart. 

"Yield," Harrow said, and her eyes were very wide, her pupils huge lightless voids. Her close-cropped hair was slick and wet, and as Gideon watched, Harrow tossed her head, impatiently, dislodging a strand that had stuck to her forehead, threatening to drip sweat into her eye. 

"I yield," Gideon said, but Harrow didn't move, she just kept Gideon trapped against the wall, pinned like an insect. Gideon felt the tip of Harrow's rapier bite into her skin with each breath. 

They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment, and Gideon was exquisitely aware of how her own clothes clung to her, stuck to her sweat-slick skin. She shivered as a stray draft ran through her own hair, longer than Harrow's, and just as soaked. Finally, Harrow dropped her blade from Gideon’s chest, and sheathed it, dipping a cursory bow to Gideon before stepping away and reaching for a towel. Gideon slipped her own sword back into its scabbard and did the same. The air between them felt charged, as though the end of the match had not really ended anything at all. 

"We should clean up," Harrow said casually, over her shoulder. "I'll feel disgusting if I don't wash before this sweat dries. You're far better than I ever gave you credit for, you know. I guess I always pictured you as some, I don't know, _hobbyist_."

"You think Aiglamene would really agree to teach someone who didn't take it seriously?" Gideon picked up her own towel and started rubbing at her wet hair. Harrow had a point about wanting a sonic, and soon. She pulled her shirt away from her body, trying to cool down.

"You _are_ the Reverend Daughter."

"As if Aiglamene gives a shit about that. Trust me, she doesn't hold back; she's always plenty happy to knock me on my ass when I'm stupid enough to give her an opening. Good match, and, thank you, by the way. That was exactly what I needed."

"I know," said Harrow, simply. And that was that.

Gideon and Harrow would have to wait for their sonics, however, because when they got back to their quarters, Bob was waiting for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't already, you should go read 'fret not, dear heart' by darlingofdots, for some excellent haunted vending machine shenanigans, and Fifth House adorableness


	53. Chapter 53

_Hello,_ Bob signed, when they came in through the door, still laughing from having had to chivvy each other up the long flight of stairs - Gideon could already tell she'd be sore in the morning, and her legs were trembling slightly beneath her.

"Yes?" Gideon asked. "You mean it? We can tell the others?"

He nodded.

"Okay, great. Uh, it isn't too late - I'll go get them."

"Griddle," Harrow said, exasperated. 

"Oh! Right. We're not exactly fit for company right now. Give us ten minutes to clean up, and we'll be with you."

It took twenty. Harrow insisted on reapplying her paint - which didn't take her long - but that made Gideon feel guilty that she hadn't done the same. Truthfully, she'd been somewhat lackadaisical about it since being injured - it wasn't like she'd been able to do much about her face being bare during the long weeks she'd been confined to bed, and now, well, everyone had already seen her face. What difference did it make?

But tonight felt different, and important, and so Gideon painted her face properly, not just the cursory streaks of black on her cheekbones and lips that were all she'd been bothering with. They gathered the chairs in the sitting room together into a large circle, and then Gideon decided that they should head down to the kitchen first, and get some coffee. It wasn't too late, but it still was rather late, and it just seemed polite to have coffee on hand, if she was keeping them all from their beds. 

Harrow went to fetch Abigail and Magnus, while Gideon went for Palamedes, Camilla, and Dulcie, who appeared to be over the worst of her coughing, and though she looked drawn and exhausted, refused to be left behind. Jeannemary and Isaac were already asleep, but Abigail promised to bring them up to date the next morning.

When they were all settled, Gideon gave the briefest explanation she could get away with, while in the presence of two academics who never met a pointless question they could resist asking, before calling Bob through from the other room. 

_Hello_ , Bob signed at them all. 

Gideon noticed that Palamedes returned the gesture, almost reflexively. "You sign?" she asked.

"Of course," Sextus said. "Everyone on the Sixth does."

"We do learn on the Fifth," Magnus said apologetically, "but I'm afraid I'm a tad rusty."

Bob's long phalanges flashed slightly too quickly for Gideon to follow.

"Of course," Camilla said, signing as she spoke. "I don't mind interpreting."

Bob pulled up a chair, sitting across the circle from Camilla, and he started to talk.

***

In the end, Gideon and Harrow made two more trips down to the kitchen for more coffee, and snacks, as everyone talked it over. Both Abigail and Palamedes became repeatedly distracted by the knowledge that Bob and the others had been at Canaan House since before God and His Saints had left the system, and had to keep being coaxed back onto the topic at hand. They apologised profusely, especially when it became clear that Bob's memories of the myriad were patchy, at best. Even the most perfectly preserved spirit could only do so much without any actual brain matter to keep their thoughts in.

"This is the note you asked Harrow to take," Sextus said to Gideon, with the air of someone who has just been struck by sudden realisation, as the conversation was starting to wind down "the night Dulcie woke up."

Gideon nodded.

"Well," he said then to Bob, "you didn't half take your time deciding to speak to us."

 _Actually, I think you'll find that we made the decision with the utmost haste, by our standards,_ Camilla relayed, eyes on the movements of Bob's fingers, _we once debated a change in the rotas for weeding the upper terraces for over a century. We are not accustomed to doing anything according to mortal timeframes_

"Well then," Abigail said, "we're certainly flattered that you made the choice to trust us so swiftly, and we will, of course, do everything we can to help."

For the next few days, rather than studying the theorems in the evenings, they set about deciphering the notes Gideon had taken from the lab. She couldn’t help feeling a tad guilty, and foolish, for having disposed of the key so rashly, and resolved that in the future she would not make major decisions while still strung-out from a major magical working (and possible resurrection - they hadn’t been able to decide whether Gideon’s work on Naberius actually had killed her - and she’d just gotten better - or whether it only _should_ have killed her).

Finally the day came when they thought they had a plan of action. Gideon was surprised that Abigail didn’t have to work terribly hard to persuade Isaac and Jeannemary to sit the ritual out. “They saw lots of this sort of thing when they came to visit us last summer - I expect they find spirit magic to be as astonishingly dull as the adults who practice it.” She explained, waving Gideon’s hasty _you aren’t dull_ aside with a grin. 

“The best adults are always somewhat dull, Gideon dear. It’s an inevitable side effect of being someone who is totally safe, and always will be. You can believe that I count it as the highest of compliments every time Jeanne complains about how boring we are.”

They took over the atrium to perform the ritual - there were fifty skeleton servants, all told, and every last one of them had elected to move on to the River, if it could be managed - so the ritual circle had to be huge unless they wanted to repeat the ritual fifty times, and banish each skeleton’s spirit individually, the atrium was the only room large enough. They spent the morning just moving aside furniture to clear a large enough space, then after a quick lunch eaten while still working, they started laying out candles, and drawing the design out in chalk. 

Then, each of them had wards drawn on the palms of their hands; the skeletons’ spirits still acted, in many ways, like the spirits of still-living humans, and Abigail was concerned that they’d risk banishing their own spirits - _aka dying_ \- along with the skeletons’, without the wards.

Finally, they were ready to start, and they each departed briefly to their rooms to switch into their ceremonial robes - they hadn’t wanted to soil them moving the furniture and chalking out the ritual circle. When they came back together, Camilla and Palamedes looked concerned.

“What’s wrong?” Gideon asked.

“The wards on our quarters have been tampered with. Someone’s been in.” Camilla said.

“It’s my fault,” Palamedes continued, wringing his hands, “I haven’t been maintaining the wards as well as I should, but we haven’t been back there in days. I only stop by once a week to renew the wards on Cytherea and Protesilaus’ corpses.”

“You aren’t to blame, Warden,” Camilla said firmly.

“No, not at all!” agreed Dulcie. “If I hadn’t been monopolising your time so shamelessly…”

That coaxed a smile from Palamedes. He kissed Dulcie lightly on the cheek. “No regrets,” he said.

“Well,” Abigail said, brusquely, “whoever it is that’s been snooping about will come and speak to us sooner or later, I’m sure. There’s nothing we can do now, and I’d hate to have to re-do all this work. Are you happy to carry on with the ritual?”

Palamedes nodded.

As the skeletons filed into the centre of the circle, stepping carefully to avoid smudging any of the chalk lines, Bob stopped by Gideon.

 _Thank you_ , he signed.

“I’ll miss you,” Gideon said back, surprised to find how much she meant it. Bob had trusted her, and been kind to her. All the skeletons had. Trust and kindness were not things she’d experienced in such abundance that she didn’t feel a pang at losing these people she’d come to count as friends. Impulsively, she gave Bob an awkward hug. He hugged her back, before she let him go and join the others.

Abigail had just drawn breath to start the ritual, when there was an almighty clatter; every single skeleton fell to the ground as one, bones scattering as the thanergy holding them together dissipated in a fatal rush. 

The skeletons were gone.

“That wasn’t us!” Abigail exclaimed. “We didn’t do that. What happened?”


	54. Chapter 54

“Teacher,” Gideon said. “We have to get to Teacher.”

She went straight for the door, trusting Harrow to follow her. The others could follow, or not, as they chose, but Gideon only knew that she had to check on Teacher and the priests. If Abigail’s ritual hadn’t been what had freed the skeletons…

“We’re going to check on Isaac and Jeanne,” Abigail said. She and Magnus ran straight to the corridor which led to their rooms. Palamedes, Camilla, and Dulcie followed Gideon and Harrow.

They headed to a wing where Gideon had only been once, just after they’d landed. Teacher wasn’t in his study, so they went further in, down the pretty, whitewashed passageway. The light bounced off the walls from the clean, well-kept windows. There was no need to knock at the doors or yell to find the action; at the end of the corridor, two figures lay - the other two priests. They had collapsed flat on their faces with arms outstretched, as if they had fallen while running. Gideon had never even learned their names.

They were outside a closed door, as though they had been trying to reach it. Gideon lead the way, carefully avoiding stepping on either body. When she reached the door, she looked back to confirm that Harrow was ready. She was; her rapier was drawn, her chain gripped tight in her off-hand. Camilla had drawn both her blades as well, and stood in front of both Palamedes and Dulcie. Gideon threw open the door.

Inside, Captain Deuteros looked up, somewhat wearily. She was sitting in a chair facing the door. Her left arm hung uselessly at her side, wizened and crumpled. Gideon did not want to look at it. It looked like it had been put in a bog for a thousand years and then stuck back on. Her right arm was tucked up against her stomach. There was an enormous crimson stain spreading out onto the perfect white of her jacket, and her right hand was clasped, as though ready to draw, around the huge bone shard shoved deep in her gut. Gideon, who knew better than most the pain that Deuteros must be in, was amazed that she was still conscious.

Teacher lay unmoving by her side. There was a rapier buried in his chest, and a dagger through his neck. There was no blood around the blades, only great splashes of it at his sleeves and his girdle. Gideon looked around for the lieutenant, found her, and then looked away again. She didn’t need a very long look to tell that Dyas was dead. For one thing, her skeleton and her body had apparently tried to divorce.

“He wouldn’t listen to reason,” said Judith Deuteros, in measured tones. “He became aggressive when I attempted to restrain him. Biding spells proved - useless. Marta used disabling force. He was the one to escalate the situation - he blew out her eye, so I was compelled to respond.. This didn’t - it didn’t have to happen.”

Two professional Cohort soldiers, one a necromancer, one a cavalier primary; all this mess for one unearthly old man. Gideon dropped to her knees beside the captain, but she pushed her away, roughly, with the tip of her boot.

“Do something for _her_ ,” she said.

“Captain,” said Camilla, “Lieutenant Dyas is dead.”

“Then don’t touch me. We did what we came to do - you won’t hurt anyone else.”

Gideon’s eyes were drawn to a machine in the corner. She hadn’t noticed it because it seemed ridiculously normal, but it wasn’t normal at all, not for Canaan House. IT was an electric transmitter box, with headphones and a mic. The antenna was set out the window, glowing faint and blue in the afternoon sunshine.

“Captain,” said Palamedes, “what did you come to do?”

“The question is what _you_ came to do, Warden. We found the bodies of the Seventh in your quarters. We know that they are both dead, and you are probably behind it. You and the Ninth. But we made sure you won’t get away with it. I sent an SOS. Backup’s coming.”

Her eyes drifted closed, briefly, and it seemed to take some effort to force them back open. When she did, she looked back to Teacher. “He said I’d betrayed the Emperor… said I’d put the Emperor at risk… I entered the Emperor’s service when I was six.”

Captain Deuteros’s chin was drooping. She lifted it back up with some effort. “He wasn’t human,” she said. “He wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. Marta put him down - Marta… Go tell them she avenged the Third and the Seventh. Tell them all it was her that stopped you.”

Dulcie stepped forwards to where Deuteros could see her.

“Captain, it isn’t what you think. I am Dulcinea Septimus, Duchess of Rhodes. There has been a terrible misunderstanding, and the Sixth are not at fault, nor the Ninth. Please let them help you. You are no use to anyone dead.”

Deuteros was slurring her words, eyes becoming unfocused, and she didn’t react visibly to Dulcinea, or even seem to notice that one of the dead she and Dyas had supposedly avenged was standing before her, alive and well. “It is my privilege to no longer be of use,” said the captain, faintly, more to herself than anyone present, for she didn’t seem aware of anyone in that moment. “We fixed the problem none of the rest of you could… did what we had to do… and paid for it, dearly.”

Harrow had gone to stand over the quiet, punctured corpse of Teacher. She sheathed her rapier and fixed Samael’s chain back to her belt, and dropped to his side like a long-tailed crow. Gideon approached Deuteros again, with Palamedes, wanting to help, but she lashed out and wouldn’t let them close, so all Gideon could do was press herself back up against the wall, smell the blood, and feel absurdly empty. 

“You fixed nothing,” Harrow said without looking up from Teacher’s still body. 

“Harrow,” Gideon said warningly.

“This man was a shell filled with a hundred souls, maybe more,” said Harrow. _Shit, when had she figured that out?_ All that time Gideon had been unconscious with injury and fever - had she really expected that Harrow wouldn’t look through the notes and the binder she’d taken from the lyctor laboratory where Teacher and the priests and skeletons had been created? “He was a thing of ridiculous power, but, I believe he was a prototype. I doubt he had killed anyone before today. I would be astonished if he had a hand in the death of the Third cavalier, and I know he had nothing to do with the death of Protesilaus the Seventh. He was created for the sole purpose of safeguarding Canaan House, and he did his duty with honour.”

Harrow’s voice sounded strained… was she _crying?_

The whites of Judith’s eyes were very white, her carefully merciless face suddenly a picture of hesitation. Her gaze moved to her cavalier; then she returned it to them, half-furious, half-beseeching. Palamedes moved in.

“I can’t save you,” he said. “I can’t even make you comfortable.” He looked up. “Gideon?”

“I could try,” she said, bleakly. She could certainly deal with the injury, but the chief concern in a gut wound was infection, was it not? What good would it be to close Deuteros' wounds only to have her expire from sepsis? Truly, she had no idea where to even start with such a thing - but of course she would try. She would always try. 

“No,” said Judith. _Well, there goes that idea_ , Gideon thought.

“A team of trained medics could save you.” Palamedes said to Deuteros. “How far away is the Second? How long do we have to wait for Cohort backup?”

“The Second’s not coming,” said Captain Deuteros. She smiled, tight and bitter. “There’s no communication with the rest of the system. There is no way to reach the Houses… I got through to the Imperial flagship, Sixth. The _Emperor_ is coming… the King Undying.”

Next to Harrow, Teacher gurgled.

“You draw him back - to the place - he must not return to,” said the dead man, with a thin and reedy whistle of a voice around the blade in his vocal cords. His whole body wriggled. His dead eyes no longer twinkled drunkenly, but his tongue slithered. His spine arched. “Oh, Lord - Lord - Lord, one of them came back-”

His voice trailed off. His body collapsed to the floor. The silence in the wake of his settling was huge and loathsome.

Palamedes said, “Judith -”

“Give me her sword,” she said.

The rapier was too heavy for her to hold. Camilla laid it over the necromancer’s knees, and Judith’s fingers closed around it. The steel of the hilt was bright in her hand. She squeezed down until her knuckles were white.

“At least let us get you out of here,” said Gideon, who thought it was a shitty room to die in, if Judith did insist on dying.

“No,” she said. “If he comes back to life again, I will be ready. And I won’t leave her now… nobody should ever have to watch their cavalier die.”

Gideon couldn’t help the way her eyes drifted over to Harrow in that moment, though she refused to let herself consider the concept. She vowed to herself that she would never - _never_ \- watch Harrow die.

The last Gideon ever saw of Captain Judith Deuteros was her propped up on the armchair, sitting as straight as she could possibly manage, bleeding out through the terrible wound at her gut. They left her with her head held high, and her face had no expression at all.


	55. Chapter 55

As they were leaving the priests’ wing, Abigail and Magnus came running up to them, clearly out of breath, trailing Isaac and… 

Just Isaac.

“Jeanne is missing,” Abigail hissed, before bending over, hands on knees, to get her breath back. 

“What?” Gideon’s mind couldn’t keep up. It was too much, in too short a space of time. The skeletons, the priests, Teacher, the Second, and now this. 

She wished she could be comforted by Judith’s assurance that the Emperor was coming, but the more Gideon learned, the more she did not want to meet him. In her comics, no one ever met the Emperor. God only ever appeared as a letter to somebody getting written out of the story, because they had to go serve the Prince Undying. She’d always been irrationally convinced that the act of seeing God - that was the end of the story. Space was being cleared for a new character.

With all that had happened, that didn’t feel irrational anymore. Having answered the call, and learned the secrets they’d learned… Gideon suspected none of them were ever going home, whether they consented to becoming lyctors or not.

“She was hungry,” Isaac said, voice too calm in the tight-lipped way that hinted at incipient hysteria held only just at bay. “She went to the kitchen hours ago, and she never came back.”

“Maybe she got distracted,” Palamedes suggested, in an obvious attempt to reassure.

“She wouldn’t leave me for that long. I should have gone with her,” the calm was beginning to show cracks, “but my hair was wet and I wanted to dry it before I went anywhere.”

Magnus put an arm around his shoulders, whispering something probably comforting into Isaac’s ear.

“So we search,” Gideon said. “We’ll start at the atrium and split up. Harrow and I will take the left-hand corridor, Sixth - can you take the right?” 

Palamedes nodded, and looked to Dulcie. “I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’m another set of eyes, even if I’m not up to much else just yet.”

“Abigail, Magnus, can you and Isaac start in the kitchens? I assume you’ve already checked them, but you know her best - if there are any clues, you’re most likely to notice.”

The corridors were eerily silent as they searched - Gideon hadn’t thought that the skeletons or the priests were especially noisy, but she sure as hell noticed their absence. She knew it was wrong to think ill of the probably-already-dead, but Gideon couldn’t help cursing Judith - if Bob and the others had still been around then they could have searched so much more quickly. 

They turned a corner and almost ran head-first into the Eighth.

“Have you seen Jeannemary?” Gideon asked, before Silas could start on whatever diatribe his sour mouth had clearly been winding up to.

“The Eighth’s business is none of yours, shadow cultist.” Silas snapped.

“Oh  _ can it _ ,” Gideon said. “She’s missing. Have you seen her or not?”

“We haven’t seen her,” the cavalier nephew said.

_ Well, it had been a long shot. _

Gideon moved to skirt around the Eighth, and continue her search, when - to her utter shock - Silas spoke up again.

“We will assist in your search.”

Gideon had to very firmly remind herself that more eyes could only be helpful - even if those eyes were Silas Oktakiseron’s.

Eventually their searching brought them to the corridor which held the Third’s quarters. 

Silas said, “I feel no wards here.”

“Is it a lure?” Harrow asked.

“Or they were also attacked,” posited Colum.

“Or they just didn’t give a shit, guys,” said Gideon, “given that the door is just standing wide open.”

They entered. The room was a sight to behold. If the Ninth’s quarters had seemed unnecessarily luxurious, to someone coming from the spartan Ninth, the Third’s quarters were frankly overwhelming. The bed was practically lost beneath cushions, comforters and throws. Each chair in the room held more padding than the whole Ninth House put together. The walls were hung with tapestries, slightly moth-eaten with age, but with gleaming threads of gold and silver still shining through.

This was all immaterial. Two things caught Gideon’s attention immediately:

Someone was crying in the slow, dull way of a person who had been crying for hours already and didn’t know how to stop.

And Ianthe Tridentarius sat in the centre of the room, waiting. She had taken up position on an ancient and sagging cushion, reclining on it like a queen. Joining a growing trend, her pale golden robes were drenched with blood, and her pallid yellow hair was spattered with more. She was trembling so hard that she was vibrating, and her pupils were so dilated you could have flown a shuttle through them. 

“Hello, friends,” she said.

The source of the crying became apparent a little way into the room. Next to a dresser with an ornate, wrought-iron framed mirror, Coronabeth was huddled, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked backward and forward. Before Gideon could pay much attention to this, Ianthe suddenly tucked her knees into her chest and moaned: it was the low, querulous moan of someone with a stomach pain, almost comical.

“This is not how I had envisioned this,” she said afterward, teeth chattering. “I am merely telling you. I won.”

Gideon said, slowly: “Princess. None of us here speaks crazy lady.”

“A very hurtful name,” said Ianthe, and yawned. Her teeth started chattering again halfway through, and she bit her tongue, yowled, and spat on the floor. A thin wisp of smoke arose from the mingled spit and blood. They all stared at it.

“I admit it, this smarts,” she said, broodingly. “I had my speech all planned out - I was going to brag somewhat, you understand. Because I didn’t need any of your keys and I didn’t need any of your secrets. I was always better than all of you - and none of you noticed - nobody ever notices, which is both my virtue and my downfall. How I hate being so good at my job…”

“Well, you’ve got our attention now,” said Gideon, as calmly as she could manage, given her growing suspicions about the source of the blood on Ianthe’s robes. Surely even the Third wouldn’t…

“I knew from the moment I got here that the energy transferral didn’t add up. None of the thanergy signatures in this building added up… until I realised what we were all being led to. What the lyctors of old were trying to tell us. You see, my field has always been energy transferral… large-scale transferral. Resurrection theory. I studied what happened when the Lord our Kindly God took our dead and dying Houses and brought them back to life, all those years ago… what price he would have had to pay. What displacement, the soul of a planet? What happens when a planet dies?”

“You claimed to be an animaphiliac.” Silas said, which surprised Gideon inasmuch as she couldn’t imagine Ianthe and Silas ever having had a conversation at all.

“That was just for show,” said Ianthe. “I’m interested in the place between death and life… the place between release and disappearance. The place over the river. The displacement… where the soul goes when we knock it about… where the things are that eat us.”

Ianthe coughed and laughed again, fretfully. She closed her eyes and let her head loll suddenly downward. When she opened them again the pupil and the iris were gone, leaving the terrible white of the eyeball. They all flinched as Ianthe cried aloud. She closed her eyes tight and shook her head like a rattle, and when she opened them back up, she was panting with exertion, as though she’d just run a race. Gideon remained in a state of flinch.

Neither of her eyes were their original colour. Both the pupil and the iris were intermingled shades of purple and deep brown. Ianthe closed her eyes a third time, shaking and crying out in a way which made Gideon remember the sad, messed-up corpse of Marta Dyas. Ianthe’s body looked, momentarily, as though it were about to split into two. She opened her eyes a third time, and when the pale lashes opened, both had returned to insipid amethyst.

“Step one,” she said, singsong, “ _ preserve _ the soul, with intellect and memory intact. Step two,  _ analyse _ it - understand its structure, its shape. Step three, _ remove and absorb it _ : take it into yourself without consuming it in the process.”

“Oh, fuck,” said Harrow, very quietly. She took a step forward, so that she stood at Gideon’s side. “The megatheorem.”

Gideon was having an _ oh fuck _ realisation of her own. Ianthe clearly  _ was _ referring to the megatheorem. The megatheorem which turned an adept and a cavalier into a lyctor and a dead cavalier. But Ianthe’s cavalier was already dead, and Corona was right here, and alive.

And the Fourth cavalier was missing.

Ianthe was still speaking, talking through the rest of the steps. Clearly she was working under the assumption that she was the only adept to have figured out the process - rather than simply being the only adept to consider it an option.

Gideon needed to think, and she needed to search the room for the body she hoped to hell she wouldn’t find. That meant she had to keep Ianthe talking. She took a casual side-step, ostensibly heading towards Coronabeth, and said: “But we have most of the keys - you can’t have seen more than a couple of theorems.”

“None, actually.” Said Ianthe. “Like I said, I am very, very good, and moreover, I’ve got common sense. If you face the challenge rooms, you don’t need the study notes - not if you’re the best necromancer the Third House ever produced. Aren’t I, Corona? Baby, stop crying, you’re going to get such a headache.”

Gideon was next to Coronabeth now. She knelt at the princess’ side long enough to establish that Corona had no blood on her, and was apparently uninjured, before standing, and continuing her way around the room, as casually as she could.

“We came to the same conclusion you did,” said Harrow, and bless Harrow for keeping Ianthe’s attention on her so that Gideon could search more quickly. “My adept refused. She discarded the idea as ghastly. Ghastly, and obvious.”

“Ghastly and obvious are my middle names,” said the pale twin. “Harrowhark, is it? You horrid Ninth goblin. It’s hardly complex mathematics. Ten thousand years ago there were sixteen acolytes of the King Undying, and then there were eight. Who were the cavaliers to the lyctor faithful? Where did they go? And…” Ianthe continued, confidentially, “are you certain that  _ ghastly _ and  _ obvious _ are the reasons she didn’t want you? A sourpuss like you would probably give one indigestion for a whole myriad.” Ianthe moaned again, clearly experiencing some indigestion of her own.

Gideon wanted to leap to Harrow’s defence, but she couldn’t speak. There was a trail of blood leading to the doorway of the bathroom, and inside… Jeannemary’s eyes were very slightly open. There was blood spattered in her curls, and there was blood spattered over the tile. The Fourth cavalier had clearly fought, and viciously, before she died. Gideon fell to her knees, taking the small, cooling body into her arms.


	56. Chapter 56

In the other room, Silas was saying - 

“None of this explains anything, Tridentarius. Kindly start speaking with some coherence.”

“Then you weren’t listening. My cavalier is dead.”

“We are all well aware of the fate of Naberius Tern. I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Not Naberius. I, ah, borrowed another cavalier, for my purposes. The Fourth - well, you’ve heard the jokes. Cannon fodder, the lot of them. I thought she’d be pleased to die for the Emperor, but then, one can hardly expect sense from teens.” Ianthe said, to the sixteen-year-old necromancer in front of her.

Gideon heard the ring of a rapier being drawn from its scabbard, and wasn’t sure whether it was Harrow, or Colum. A hand on her shoulder made her jump, but she turned, and Harrow was there, sorrow and fury turning her eyes into black burning pits. The drawn rapier must have been Colum’s then.

Silas spoke, sounding appalled: “You killed Jeannemary the Fourth?”

“I haven’t  _ killed _ the Fourth cavalier. I  _ ate _ her.” Ianthe said, indifferently. “I put a sword through her heart to pin her soul in place. Then I took it into my body. I’ve robbed Death itself… I have drunk up the substance of her immortal soul. And now I will burn her and burn her and burn her, and she will never really die. I have absorbed Jeannemary Chatur… I am more than the sum of her half, and mine. I am a saint.”

Gideon looked through the doorway, at Ianthe’s back. Ianthe’s head hung close to her chest again. She gave a hiccup that sounded a little bit like a sob, and a little bit like a laugh. As she did she appeared blurry and indistinct before them - rocking out of her edges, somehow, unreal. Gideon’s skin had already been crawling, but now it was trying to sprint. 

“There is nothing sanctified about the murder of a child.” Silas said.

Ianthe rose to stand, but Gideon did not see her move. Ianthe came back to solidity all at once, more real now than anything around her. The room faded into insignificance. She glowed from the inside out, like she had eaten a fistful of lightbulbs, or - no. Like she’d eaten lit coals, and they were burning her up. She didn’t look quite… well.

“Do you really deny it, even now?” she said. “God, it makes so much sense. Even the rapiers - light swords, light enough to be held by an amateur… a necromancer. Each challenge - fusing, controlling, binding, utilising - utilising whom? Did you notice that none of those challenges could be completed by yourself? No, you didn’t, and yet that was the biggest red flag. I had to reverse-engineer the whole thing, just from looking at it… all alone.”

Suddenly, she bent double with a cry of pain, her outline blurring and warping again.

Silas sounded quite normal now when he turned and addressed the monotonously crying girl by the dresser: “Princess Coronabeth. Is she speaking the truth? And did you, at any point, attempt to stop her, or know as a necromancer what act she was committing?”

“Poor Corona!” said Ianthe, without pulling herself upright, and her voice wasn’t quite right - there was something not quite her echoing in her words. “Don’t get on her case, you little white excuse for a human being. What could she have done? Don’t you know my sister has a bad, sad secret? Everyone looks at her and sees what they want to see… beauty and power. Incredible hair. The perfect child of an indomitable House.”

The Crown Princess of Ida was not acknowledging the fact that anyone was speaking to her. Her sister continued: “Everyone’s blind. Corona? A born necromancer? She’s as necromantic as Babs was. But Dad wanted a matched set. And we didn’t want anything to separate us - so we started the lie. I’ve had to be two necromancers since I was six. It sharpens your focus, I tell you what. No… Corona couldn’t’ve stopped me becoming a lyctor.”

“So that is lyctorhood,” said Silas. He sounded quiet, almost fretful, lost in thought. Gideon thought - just for a moment, looking past Ianthe to the Eighth, still standing by the open door, that she could see Colum Asht’s throat working. “To walk with the dead forever… enormous power, recycled within you, from the ultimate sacrifice… to make yourself a tomb.”

“You understand, don’t you?” said Ianthe.

“Yes,” said Silas. Colum closed his eyes and was still.

“Yes,” repeated Silas. “I understand  _ fallibility _ … and fallibility is a terrible thing to understand. I understand that if the Emperor and King Undying came to me now and asked me why I was not a lyctor, I would fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness, that any of us had ever failed this test. May I be burnt one atom at a time in the most silent hole in the most lightless part of space, Lord- Kindly Prince- should I ever contemplate betraying the compact you appointed between him, and you, and me.”

Colum opened his eyes again.

“Silas-” he began.

“I will forgive you eventually, Colum,” said his purse-mouthed uncle, “for assuming I would have been prey to this temptation. Do you believe me?”

“I want to,” said his nephew fervently, with a thousand-yard stare, and his missing finger twitching around his shield. “God help me, I want to.”

Ianthe drew herself laboriously upright said, contemptuously: “Come off it, you’d drain him dry if you though it would keep your virtue intact - I know the Eighth specialises in  _ siphoning _ . This is the same thing, just more humane.”

Something inside her rebelled at  _ humane _ . Her skin tore in great, bloody stripes, as though it had shrunk, or she had grown, and, as quickly, the seeping tears in her flesh sealed themselves over. Sour bile and pink-tinged spittle foamed at the corners of her mouth, and her fingers, at her sides, arched, bending in ways that the human skeleton did not - should not - allow. Through it all, she kept that calm, amethyst gaze fixed on the Eighth necromancer.

“Do not speak to me anymore,” said Silas. “I brand you heretic, Ianthe Tridentarius. I sentence you to death. As your cavalier is no more, you must stand in for him: make your peace with your House and your Emperor, because I swear to the King Undying you will find no more peace in this life, anywhere, in any world you care to travel to. Brother Asht-”

Then Gideon could listen no more to what Silas was saying, because Harrow was whispering urgently in her ear - 

“Whatever she thinks she’s done, she hasn’t done it, not yet. There’s still time!”

“Harrow,” Gideon said, feeling Jeannemary’s blood drying sticky and cool on her hands, and the too-light, exsanguinated weight of the body in her arms, “she’s dead.”

“She’s still fighting - I can see her fighting Ianthe. There has to be something we can do.  _ Please _ , Griddle.”

It was impossible. Jeannemary was dead, and only one person had ever performed resurrection. But Jeannemary was Harrow’s friend. Harrow’s first friend. And how many times now had Gideon done the impossible? If she could perform miracles for her own sake, for the sake of the Sixth, and Dulcie, and even poor, dead, Naberius Tern, then surely for Harrow she could do anything.

_ Fuck _

“I’ll try. Shit, I don’t even know  _ what _ I’ll try, but you have my word that if there is anything to be done, I’ll do it. Keep Ianthe off me - can you do that? If she figures out what we’re trying to do, we’ll all be dead.”


	57. Chapter 57

Harrow paused for a moment, pressing a swift and desperate kiss to Gideon’s lips, before getting to her feet, and drawing her blade. Gideon longed to stop her, for in that kiss had been something of love, but also something of goodbye, and Gideon was suddenly afraid that Harrow suspected she would not survive this fight, and counted the cost as none too dear, if only Jeannemary would live. 

_Well, fuck Harrow anyway. Fuck her loyalty, and her thrice-damned self-sacrifice._ Gideon wanted to call her back, but knew she wouldn’t come. All Gideon could do now was try to save Jeannemary, and do it fast enough to save Harrow in turn. 

The body then - she would start there. Easier to fix the body when the spirit was not present to feel the pain of it; and what good would it be to try and call Jeannmary’s soul back to a body not currently living? Gideon didn’t want to make Jeanne into some sort of bound servant, like Bob or Alexis. She wanted the Fourth cavalier to truly live again. She tried to ignore the part of her brain which was reminding her that only one man had ever performed resurrection, and that man was God, and instead focus on the fact that it _had_ been done, and that God had once been only a man.

Now that she was no longer blinkered by the illusion that what she was doing could strictly be called necromancy, the process was far easier. Thalergy sprung eagerly to her command, as though it had been waiting in the wings her whole life for her to notice it, and she wove muscle and cartilage, sealing over the punctured heart, the torn intercostal muscles, and finally, the skin, until Jeannemary’s body was whole.

Whole and empty. Not just of spirit, but also of blood. Gideon could stimulate her marrow, try to accelerate the formation of new blood, but the system couldn’t begin from nothing; it needed to be kick-started. Instead, Gideon lay Jeannemary’s body gently down and went to the sink, turning on a tap and drinking down as much water as she felt that she could hold - she was going to need the fluids - before sitting back down, taking Jeannemary's body back into her arms, and turning her attention inwards. 

Ruthlessly, she forced her own body into overdrive, until it was producing as much blood in a minute as it usually should in a week - and she could only thank providence that her blood was O negative, and she did not have to worry about whether they would be compatible. Then, remembering the cartilaginous tube which Dulcie had created, Gideon spun her own cartilage and bone until she had a short tube, capped by a bone needle at either end. Wincing, she punctured her own vein, hooking herself up to Jeannemary, letting her own blood flow into the younger girl and praying with desperate superstition that something of her own body’s indomitable will to survive would transfer across, along with the plasma and platelets and blood cells.

This done, Gideon could only wait, for a time, as blood drained from her - faster than she could replace it, but hopefully not so fast that she would be too weak to do what she must. Harrow stood, not far from the door, in a defensive position - the ringing of blade on blade that Gideon heard was, in fact, Colum Asht. He came down on Ianthe like a wolf on the fold. He was terrifically fast for such a big, ragged-looking man, and as Gideon watched, he hit Ianthe with such kinetic force that she should have been flung back to splatter on the wall like a discarded sandwich. His arm was true and steady; there was no hesitation in his hand or in his blade.

Neither was there any hesitation in Ianthe’s. Gideon had seen the exquisite sword of the Fourth House lying in a smear of blood between Ianthe and the bathroom where Gideon now sat, lightheaded, leaning back against the tiled wall. Now it was in Ianthe’s hand. She met Colum’s blade with a flat parry - it knocked away that titanic blow as though Ianthe were not a head shorter and a third of his weight - and she eased back into perfect, sure-footed position.

It was Jeannemary’s movement that tucked Ianthe’s arm behind her back, and Jeanne’s nimble, ferocious footwork. It was profoundly unsettling to see Jeannemary’s moves restrung in Ianthe Tridentarius’s body - but there they were, recreated right down to the way she held her head. It was only then that it hit home to Gideon what Ianthe had done. The bizarre sight of another necromancer holding a sword - a not-quite (she hoped) ghost fighting inside the meat suit of an adept - made it all real. 

Normally Gideon would have been fascinated to watch the cavalier of the Eighth at work - he was as light on his feet as a feather, and yet his blows were all as heavy as lead - but her gaze was locked on Ianthe, only Ianthe, who was moving more like Jeannemary than Jeannemary every could, whose body was as agile and lithe and as suprahuman as a wisp.

But there was a catch. The sword of the Fourth House must have weighed at least a kilogram, and Jeannemary’s muscle memory could not quite account for Ianthe’s arms. Some power must have been compensating for her body - her elbow should have been locking like a door - but whatever she was doing to wield that thing, it was just a fraction not good enough. She was sweating. There was a pucker in the middle of that preternaturally calm forehead, a wince in the eyes, the slight drunken lolling of the head that she had suffered from before. As she faded, Colum moved in for advantage, a high vertical cut to Ianthe’s naked collarbones. She avoided his move, but only just, scrambling away with a panicked, pained cry, and she was Ianthe again - all languorous diffidence, no trace of the tightly-coiled spring that was Jeannemary Chatur. 

Jeannemary was still fighting. Gideon only hoped she wouldn’t resist so well that Ianthe would be killed outright before Jeanne could be restored to herself. If Gideon understood the theorems they’d studied, the preserved soul was truly preserved - as though it still lived. Jeannemary, technically, was not yet among the dead, and Gideon held stubbornly to the hope that a not-quite-dead soul, and a not-quite-living body could be recombined and brought fully back to themselves more easily than an expired soul could be pulled from the river and affixed to a construct; after all, it had taken three souls to power each skeleton, and a hundred or more for Teacher. Gideon had only herself, and only Jeanne.

Colum continued to press his advantage. Ianthe shook herself, and he raised his foot and kicked her sword out of her hand. It spun over to the wall and clattered there miserably, far out of reach. Colum raised his sword.

The Princess of the Third House raised her hand to her mouth, gored a chunk of flesh from the heel of her palm, and spat it at him like a missile. Ianthe disappeared beneath a greasy, billowing tent - cellular, fleshy, coated all over with neon-yellow bubbles and thin pink film. Colum bounced off this thing as though he had hit a brick wall. He went ass-over-teakettle and rolled over and over, only at last skidding back up to stand, locking himself into position, panting.

Where there had been a necromancer, there was instead a semi-transparent dome of skin and subcutaneous fat, baffling to the eye. Nothing loath, Colum charged again, smashing his shield down on it with a bad wet noise like _squirk_. It was rubbery: it bounced back against him. He gave a mighty slash downward with his sword: the flesh-bubble tore and bled, but did not give. Something about that bubble made what remained of Gideon’s blood run cold. She reached out with her free hand, just managing to grasp at Harrow’s ankle.

“Don’t go near them,” she said to Harrow, “Don’t touch her. Don’t think about touching her - do whatever you have to do to keep her from touching you.”

Gideon looked around wildly for Silas - surely he must see the dangerous futility of this… Colum circled the horrible skin shield, testing it with slashes, shoving his blade home hard and grunting when the flesh did not give. Gideon’s eyes found Silas just as he closed his eyes and said quietly, “The necromancer must fight the necromancer.”

Colum raised his arm for a beautiful downward cross-slice, then jerked back as though he had been stung. He retreated, sword and small shield held at the ready, and gritted his teeth. Gideon had some idea of what leeching felt like - though each time she’d done it, she had not been present enough to herself to feel the pain of it - and she swore to God she could see the haze in the air and feel the chilly suction as Colum’s necromancer began to siphon.

“Stop fighting me,” said Silas, without opening his eyes.

Colum said gruffly: “Don’t do it. Don’t put me under. Not this time.”

“Brother Asht,” said his necromancer, “if you cannot believe, then for God’s sake _obey_.”

Colum made a sound in the back of his throat. Ianthe was visible as a blurred shape behind the yellow-streaked flesh wall. Silas walked forward on light feet - crackles of electricity arcing over his skin, his hands - and laid his palms on the shield.

Gideon’s eyes drifted shut, and she realised, distantly, that she was close to passing out. Forcing her eyes to open again, she prayed that what she’d given had been enough, and pulled the needles free of her flesh and Jeannemary’s, directing a small burst of thalergy at each of them, veins and skin sealing over as though they’d never been pierced. Gideon took a deep breath.

_Now for the hard bit._


	58. Chapter 58

Gideon closed her eyes, and once more she extended her awareness into Jeannemary’s body. It was trivial to chase away the encroaching tide of thanergy, spike the heart with thalergy to start its beating, and encase the newly-living body in a protective ward, to keep it from becoming host to the first opportunistic spirit to come along. 

Gideon revelled in the rush of strength she felt, even woozy from blood loss and having already performed a feat of healing which should not have even been necromantically possible. How had she been blind for so long to an entire half of her power? She felt as though she’d lived her whole life bound and blindfolded, and now she was free. 

Thalergy was less biddable than thanergy, less content to lie inert. Something inside her understood that she could bring each dead flower in the vase by Ianthe’s bed back to roaring life, that they would willingly thrust new roots through delicate glass and sink them deep into the wood beneath, just to please her. They _longed_ to do so. At her slightest whim they would blossom, and seed, and transform this whole cursed, blood-soaked room into a garden of new life. The power was intoxicating, and she fought for focus as the life around her clamoured for her attention. 

Though Gideon could not see, she perceived the lives around her; Harrow close, and faithful, and burning with a power of her own that Gideon filed away for future consideration, suspecting what she could not yet bring herself to truly acknowledge, not when Jeannemary was relying on her concentration. Gideon saw Harrow, and understood, and let herself forget that understanding for now, moving her attention on. 

She saw Coronabeth, and wondered how she had ever mistaken the princess for a necromancer. The energy which thrummed within Harrow, calling to her, was completely absent from Corona. Coronabeth was empty. Gideon acknowledged her presence, and moved on, filtering out her awareness of Corona, just as she had with Harrow. 

She saw Silas, and Colum, and something about Colum made her flinch away; Silas was still siphoning him, she realised, and Colum was absent from himself, so absent that she could not find his spirit at all. Where there should have been a man, there was only a void, and Gideon understood that if she answered the call of that vacuum, she could get trapped in it, Silas could drain her, as he drained all the energy that rushed in to fill the hole that once was his cavalier. Energy… and more. Gideon hurriedly reinforced her wards around Jeannemary’s body, before dismissing both Colum and Silas from her attention, and focusing, finally, on Ianthe. 

Ianthe was difficult to look at, through her necromantic vision. At times she was totally invisible, but not a void, like Colum. It was like she generated too much light - or too much darkness - for Gideon to make her out. But the energy flared and waned, and sputtered, coming in fits and starts, and sometimes Ianthe looked no different to her sister. Gideon hoped that this was a sign that Jeannemary was still resisting integration, fighting against being consumed.

 _Ianthe is an idiot_ , Gideon thought to herself. _There’s a reason it’s your own cavalier_. Ianthe had said it herself - _“Step two, analyse it - understand its structure, its shape.”_ Had Ianthe so much as had a conversation with Jeannemary? However did she expect to understand Jeanne’s soul well enough to incorporate it into herself? Gideon couldn’t deny that Ianthe was a genius - nobody who could reverse-engineer the lyctoral megatheorem without access to a single theorem stone could be anything but a genius; but she was starting to suspect that in some ways, Ianthe was little more than a kind of necromantic gymnast, doing showy tricks without concern for the theory. Ianthe lacked rigor - and for _Gideon_ to be saying that, well, then it must be bad. 

_There_ \- as Ianthe’s control lapsed, and she was visible again, Gideon caught sight of the faintest of ties between Jeannemary’s body and Ianthe’s. The Fourth’s cavalier was still holding on, and for the first time, Gideon let herself believe that this might actually be possible; that she was doing more than killing time before Ianthe killed her, doing more than beating her head against an impossible quest for the love of someone who would never, could never, love her back.

With a delicacy she hadn’t known herself capable of - more delicate even than the process of piecing together Tern’s shattered patella, or snuffing out Dulcie’s cancer - Gideon gave the thread of Jeannemary’s spirit the faintest tug, spooling it in, hoping that if she went slowly enough, gently enough, then Ianthe wouldn’t notice what was happening until it was too late. Her integration was already so erratic, that surely what Gideon was doing would be lost amongst the noise?

…

Gideon came to an eternity later, as the limp, dead body in her arms coughed and cried out - limp and dead no more, but vibrant with life. Jeannemary's soul was completely free of Ianthe; Gideon checked, and checked again, but could find no trace whatsoever of any binding between them. 

“Jeanne?” The small voice came from somewhere to Gideon’s left. She opened her eyes and found the Fifth, and Sixth had joined Harrow off to her right, guarding the entrance to the bathroom, though currently they guarded against nothing. Ianthe’s attention was still fixed on the Eighth. In the bathroom with her were Dulcie, and Isaac.

Gideon surrendered the crying, gasping Jeannemary into the arms of her crying, gasping adept, and climbed to her feet. She stood just in time to see Ianthe look over Silas’ shoulder with horror.

“Well, now you’re fucked,” she announced. Then she passed out. 

“We need to get out of here before she wakes,” Gideon said, and then immediately rethought that opinion, as she saw what stood between them and the doorway out to the hall. Colum the Eighth’s eyes were as liquid black as, before, Ianthe’s had been liquid white. He had stopped moving as a human being did. The warrior’s economy of movement; the long and lovely lines of someone who had trained with the sword his whole life; the swift-footedness was gone. He now moved like there were six people inside him, and none of those six people had ever been inside a human being before. He sniffed. He craned his head around - and kept craning. With an awful crack, his head turned one hundred and eighty degrees to look impassively at the room around him.

One of the lightbulbs screamed, exploded, died in a shower of sparks. The air was very cold. Gideon’s breath came as frosty white frills in the sudden darkness, and the remaining lights struggled to pierce the gloom. Colum licked his lips with a grey tongue.

Gideon reached into her pockets and collected handfuls of bone fragments, throwing them in a long, overhand arc. They fell true at Colum’s feet. Gideon gestured, finding that - though she was tired - the work she’d done was not strictly necromantic, and her reserves of thanergy were almost untouched. Spikes erupted from the bone she’d tossed, crowding Colum between them, locking him in tight. Colum raised his white-booted foot indifferently, and kicked through them. They exploded into dusty, tooth-coloured clouds of calcium. Gideon tried again, spinning the airborne particles into a shield around Colum, but again, he broke through it as though the strongest temporal bone she could manifest were no more than flimsy.

Silas looked up, nearly foetal, from the floor. He still glowed like a pearl in a sunbeam, but he’d lost his focus. There were lights beneath Colum the Eighth’s skin: things pushed and slithered along his muscles as he walked, heavy-footed, rocking from side to side. It looked as though something - perhaps several somethings - were growing inside him, waiting to burst forth. 

Silas wiped the blood away from his nose and mouth and said calmly: “Brother Asht, listen to the words of the head of your House.”

Colum advanced.

“Come back,” said Silas, unruffled. “I bid you return. I bid you return. Colum - I bid you return. I bid you return. I bid you return _I bid you return._ I bid. I bid, I bid, I bid - Colum -”

The thing that lived in Colum raised Colum’s sword, and drove the point through Silas Octakiseron’s throat. 

Gideon shouted a warning, moved to try and pull the others into the bathroom; they had a better chance if they could bottle the creature up in the doorway, but Harrow was too fast for her. She drew her rapier from its scabbard and she threw herself at the grey thing wearing a person skin. It was not a cavalier: it did not meet the arc of her sword with a parry. It just clouted her with Colum’s shield, and a strength no human being ever had. Harrow was knocked flying, and Gideon staggered forward after her, very nearly fell, and pulled Harrow out of the way of a sword gracelessly slammed downward. Then Camilla was there, blades flashing, covering their retreat, as Harrow sprung to her feet, and they crowded Palamedes and the Fifth inside the bathroom. 

The doorway was just wide enough for Camilla and Harrow to fight side-by-side, and with the two of them together, they were barely keeping the thing which had been Colum at bay. It opened its mouth, and opened its eyes. Its eyeballs were gone - Colum’s eyeballs were gone - and now the sockets were mouths ringed with teeth, with little tongues slithering out of them. As Gideon watched, Camilla took one of the arms clean off at the elbow. Colum’s shield clattered to the ground. To Gideon’s horror, the bleeding stump sprouted an explosion of whip-like tentacles, barbed with spines that dripped with some hideous ichor. Each tentacle ended in another cavernous maw, filled with rows of sharp fangs.

The severed arm itself wriggled free of the straps fixing it to the fallen shield, and then it was bulging, growing horrible limbs. Harrow and Camilla were still focused on the larger beast, but Gideon saw as the smaller one started to skitter, spider-like, towards Coronabeth and Ianthe.

Gideon cried out, but the noise was lost in the din of the room, and the twins were insensible to everything around them. Gideon couldn’t hear what they were saying; they were mere feet away, but might as well have been in another world. Gideon pulled out the last pieces of bone from her pockets, and threw, encasing the horror which had once been Colum the Eighth’s left forearm in bone. As Gideon fought to keep it imprisoned, Coronabeth screamed at Ianthe, and her shriek of rage and pain was piercing enough that Gideon heard it, even over the sounds of battle, and the awful multi-voiced bellowing of the Colum-creature.

“It should have been me! Even after I killed him, you didn’t choose me.” Coronabeth spat. “Well now _I’m_ making the choice.” And then she raised a knife, and cut her own throat, bathing the barely-conscious Ianthe in a hot rush of blood. 

Gideon reached out, stupidly, as though somehow she could stop what had already happened. The creature in the doorway lurched towards her, raising the arm with its mass of tentacle-mouths and wrapped them around her upper arm, barbs sinking in deep. With sudden, awful force, it wrenched. There was a tearing, a sick, wet pop, and Gideon’s right arm was flung across the room. 

Harrow screamed, and the necklet of teeth around Gideon’s neck exploded into huge bands, wrapping around Gideon and cocooning her entirely. She felt herself being tugged further into the dubious safety of the bathroom as the burst of thanergy around her faded as quickly as it had bloomed, and the enamel armour crumbled away around her.

 _“Enough!”_ said Palamedes, and his voice was as calm and measured as ever, yet somehow audible over the cacophony. 

Everything stopped.


	59. Chapter 59

Gideon’s body froze where it lay, as though steel needles had pierced her hand and her legs. Gideon felt cold all over. She tried to speak, but her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth, and she tasted blood. She struggled - an insect pinned to its backing -but could not move. From the stillness around her - she was not the only one. Even the Colum-beast was unmoving.

Palamedes surveyed his work, and he saw that it was good. Then he walked calmly over to kneel at Dulcie’s side, pressing a kiss to her frozen, unyielding lips. He rose and wove himself between the cavaliers in the doorway until he stood before Camilla. He leaned in, whispered something in her ear, and then kissed her too. He took a blade from her froze, unresisting hand and buried it deep in Colum’s gut, kicked the arm-spider where it had half-extricated itself from the bone cocoon Gideon had made around it, and then he turned and ran. 

Gideon tried to flail against her invisible bonds, but her bones felt rigid in her body, like she was just the meat sock around them. Her heart struggled against her inflexible rib cage, her terror rising in her mouth. 

The abominations freed themselves first. Haltingly, and then with a liquid, inhuman speed which would have made Gideon shudder, had she been capable of even that much movement, they followed Palamedes from the room. She heard the awful skittering as they pursued him down the hallway, and an awful moment later, a distant explosion shook the room, and they were free. 

Camilla lurched forward with a cry; she was gone from the room in a heartbeat. Dulcie, starting to sob, pulled herself to her feet and went after. The Fifth were still clustered around the Fourth; Magnus had wrapped Jeannemary in his jacket, to cover her blood-soaked and torn shirt, and possibly also to keep her warm; she was shivering. 

Then Harrow was there, and she was all Gideon could see. Her paint was a mess, streaked with sweat, and…  _ tears? _ At some point, she’d taken a blow to the face; her cheek was swollen, and blood ran from a split in her lip. Harrow’s teeth were bloody, but when she smiled at Gideon, the smile was long and sweet and beautiful. Gideon found herself smiling back so hard her mouth hurt.

Harrow fell to her knees where Gideon lay, and kissed her. A bittersweet kiss which tasted of promise, and of blood; Gideon’s blood and Harrow’s, mingling where their lips met. Then Harrow was pulling Gideon into her lap with one arm. With the other, she held Gideon’s severed right, as though she could somehow make whole what had been sundered. 

“Fix it!” she demanded, and she sounded so young; her voice held the kind of unwavering faith that even as children they had not ever possessed, the childlike trust having been beaten from them before they were old enough to speak. 

Gideon already knew the answer, but for Harrow’s sake, she checked. 

_ No. _

She had exhausted herself, entirely, in saving Jeannemary, and even now that she recognised the cost, she could not be sorry. She had just enough strength to pinch off the blood vessels in her shoulder, though she wasn’t sure what good it would do. She’d lost so much blood already that it was a struggle to remain conscious. She was empty of thalergy; her newfound power extinguished in the dizzying rush of resurrection, and now that she understood her abilities better, she knew that it was this which had pulled her back from the banks of the River, time and time again. It was gone now, utterly depleted, and so there would be no saving Gideon this time.

Her necromancy, however, still stood strong; her reserves of thanergy relatively untouched. She could not save herself, but she knew what she  _ could _ do. She knew what she  _ had _ to do. 

_ Step one - preserve the soul, with intellect and memory intact _ . She fixed the theorem in her mind, the first part of the megatheorem she’d ever seen, and wrapped it around herself, pinning her soul in place, like a fly in amber. The wards still on her palms helped - they’d been designed around that very theorem, designed to keep her spirit from pulling loose from her body. 

She forgot, for a moment her sundering, the impromptu amputation, and raised her left arm to roll up the sleeve of her right - for no reason except that it gave her something to do with her shaking hand - but her questing fingers met only empty air. She opened her eyes, looked up at her cavalier. She made her voice as calm as possible: in a way, she  _ was _ calm. She was the calmest she had ever been in her entire life. It was just her body that was frightened.

“Harrow,” she said. “I understand now. I really, truly, absolutely understand. I love you. I always will love you. You are the greatest treasure that the Ninth has ever produced, the first flower of our House, and you deserve everything I can give you. Even in death.”

“ _ I  _ don’t understand.” Harrow said in a frantic counterpoint to Gideon’s own calm. “You aren’t dying, you can’t be.”

“I am dying. I’m all out of juice. Just enough left to give you the chance to be everything.”

“You can’t leave me. Griddle, please…”

Consciousness was drifting from her, and Gideon gripped Harrow’s fingers tightly in hers, speaking with as much urgency as she could muster. “Harrow, listen. It’s very important that you listen, and do exactly as I say. Can you do that?”

“Will it help you?”

“If you do what I say, then I’ll be with you forever. I swear that I will. Now, this is going to be hard to hear, and I’m so sorry, but I don’t have time to make it easier for you. Harrow - you _are_ a necromancer. You always have been. The cocoon that protected me, when I was injured just now, that came from you. I felt it. I don’t know what happened - maybe you were too young when your parents told you what they’d done to make you, and all you understood was that necromancy was an awful thing, so you pushed yours away and forgot it had ever been there - but it’s still inside you.”

“No,” Harrow said.

“Yes,” Gideon said. “Don’t you see? You can have everything you ever wanted - you can be a necromancer, and not just a necromancer, but a _ lyctor _ . I’m dying, and there’s nothing you can do except make that death mean something.”

“Don’t leave me,” Harrow begged

“I won’t,” Gideon said in return. “But this is the only way I can stay. Let me stay with you; let me be a part of you. Let me make you happy. You can do this. You studied the theorems, just like I did. You’re a genius, Harrow, and I’ve done the first step for you; I’ve fixed my soul in place. Take it as slowly as you need to. Take a day - take a week! - I don’t care, just do it.”

“I can’t bear it.”

“You can,” Gideon said, with utter conviction. “You can do anything; I believe in you.”

Harrow said, with some difficulty: “I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.”

“Yes you can, it’s just less great and less hot.”

“Fuck you, Nonagesimus. I love you. Don’t you understand? _I love you!_ You can’t die.”

“Well,” Gideon mulled this revelation over with a strange acceptance - she was more than halfway dead already, and didn’t have the energy for shock. “I wish you’d said something before. Harrow.” Gideon forced her eyes open, not sure when she’d let them close, and looked into Harrow’s eyes for what she knew would be the last time. “Someday you’ll die, and get buried in the ground, and we can work this out then. For now - I can’t say you’ll be fine. I can’t say that this is the right thing to do - but I know that it is the  _ only _ thing.”

Gideon couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Her body was becoming cold, and unresponsive, and she knew that the time had come.

“One flesh, one end,” said Gideon, and it was barely a murmur, on the very edge of hearing.

Harrow said, ”Don’t leave me.”

_ “The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die:” _ Gideon heard herself saying, as the blackness closed around her,  _ “and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee _ . See you on the flip side, sugarlips.”


	60. Epilogue

She came around in a nest of sterile white. She was lying on a gurney, wrapped up in a crinkly thermal blanket. She turned her head; next to her there was a window, and outside the window was the deep velvet blackness of space, but the void could not touch her; she burned up inside with thanergy, as though she’d swallowed a star, or perhaps the whole universe.  _ Her _ whole universe. Cold stars glimmered in the far distance like diamonds, and they were very beautiful.

If it had been possible to die of desolation, she would have died then and there, realising what she’d become, but she never had been any good at dying: as it was, all she could do was lie on the bed and observe the smoking wreck of her heart.

The lamps had been turned down to an irritatingly soothing glow, bathing the small room in soft, benevolent radiance. They shone down on her gurney, on the white walls, on the painfully clean white tiles of the floor. The brightest light in the room came from a tall reading lamp, positioned next to a metal chair in the corner. In the chair sat a man. On the arm of his chair was a tablet and in his hands was a sheaf of flimsy, which he would occasionally shuffle and take notes on. He was simply dressed. His hair was cropped close to his head, and in the light it shone a nondescript dark brown.

The man must have sensed her wakefulness, for he looked up from his flimsy and his tablet at her, and he shuffled them aside to stand. He approached her, and she saw that his sclera were black as space. The irises were dark and leadenly iridescent - a deep rainbow oil slick, ringed with white. The pupils were as glossy black as the sclera.

She could never tell precisely how she knew who he was, only that she did. She threw off the rustling thermal blanket - someone had dressed her in an unlovely turquoise hospital smock - and got out of bed, and she threw herself down shamelessly at the feet of the Necromancer Prime in a thoroughly uncharacteristic display of piety. 

She pressed her forehead down onto the cold, clean tiles.

“Please undo what I’ve done, Lord,” she said, recognising the soul within her, as she would recognise her love, the other half of herself, were she struck wholly insensate. 

“I will never ask anything of you, ever again, if you just give me back the life of Harrow Nova.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going back on hiatus for a bit, while I work on book 2 - this is not the end, I promise!
> 
> Hoping to start posting again in a couple of weeks, but January is currently kicking my butt and I want to make sure I'm doing this fic justice, so it may be a little longer if the pieces aren't coming together how I want them to.
> 
> Thanks for bearing with me!


	61. One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Book 2!

ℕ𝕀ℕ𝔼 𝕄𝕆ℕ𝕋ℍ𝕊 𝔹𝔼𝔽𝕆ℝ𝔼 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔼𝕄ℙ𝔼ℝ𝕆ℝ'𝕊 𝕄𝕌ℝ𝔻𝔼ℝ

“... I can’t,” God said. He had a bittersweet, scratchy voice, and it was infinitely gentle. I hated it completely. “I would very much like to. But that soul’s inside you now. If I tried to pull it out, I’d take yours with it, and destroy both in the process. What’s done is done is done. Now you have to live with it.”

I wanted to call him a liar; hadn’t _I_ done that very thing with Jeannemary? Granted, I’d had her body, but he was _God._ Anything I could do, surely he could do better. But it wasn’t the body that was the problem - _was it, Harrow?_ Jeannemary had fought, tooth and nail; she had never let Ianthe even begin to absorb her. _You?_ I didn’t know how you’d done what you had, but you’d done it thoroughly. Nothing inside me rebelled - aside from my stomach, which was trying to insist that expelling a stream of bile would somehow bring back the thing I’d swallowed, the thing that was choking me. You were quiescent, docile, placid, and about a dozen other words for _gone._ No, you weren’t fighting. By the time I came back to consciousness - something I had very much not been expecting - there was nothing left of you but a quiet wellspring of almost endless power. What hope did I have of drawing you out of myself, when there wasn’t enough of _you_ left to take hold of?

I was empty. That was the terrible thing: there was _nothing_ inside me but the sick and bubbling detestation of everything. I picked myself up off the floor - not even noticing in that moment that I’d used _both hands_ to lever myself up (I had much greater concerns just then than lost limbs) - and I looked the Emperor dead in his dark and shining eyes.

“How dare _you_ ask me to live with it?”

The Emperor did not render me down to a pile of ash, as I partway wished he would. Instead, he rubbed at one temple, and he held my gaze, sombre and even. 

“Because,” he said, “the Empire is dying.”

 _So let it die,_ I thought. 

“If there had been any less need you would be sitting back home in Drearburh, living a long and quiet life with nothing to worry or hurt you,” he said; what a joke! Guess what, Harrow? God is a fucking idiot. “And your cavalier would still be alive. But there are things out there that even death cannot keep down. I have been fighting them since the Resurrection. I can’t fight them by myself.”

Scornfully, I said, “But you’re _God_.”

And God said, “And I am not enough.”

I walked away, to the window, staring out at those beautiful, distant stars. I should have been impressed; you’d known for scant moments that you were even a necromancer at all, and I’d asked you to perform a necromantic feat that only a handful of others had ever achieved. I’d asked you with the utmost belief in you, the utmost faith that you were every bit as miraculous as you insisted I was.

And you went one better. You took your more-than-halfway dead adept, and you made her a Lyctor instead. I couldn’t begin to fathom how you’d done it. More, I couldn’t imagine _why._

 _Did God even know what the universe lost, when it lost you?_ The thought burned. 

God didn’t seem to notice - or care - that I was no longer paying him any heed. I wished that he would leave me alone to my misery, but he just kept talking, in that horribly mild, and mildly horrible voice.

“It wasn’t meant to happen like this. I intended for the new Lyctors to become Lyctors after thinking and contemplating and genuinely understanding their sacrifice - an act of bravery, not an act of fear and desperation. Nobody was meant to lose their lives unwillingly at Canaan House. But - Cytherea…”

I thought of Bob, and Alexis, and Teacher, and all the others. All the photos in that binder, and wanted to turn and laugh at that awful, kindly face, because I knew more than he could ever suspect of how many lives had been unwillingly lost at Canaan House.

And still, he kept talking, as though I cared the slightest bit what he had to say. I suppose he was _God._ He was probably accustomed to people listening when he spoke. Perhaps he could be forgiven for taking my attention for granted. Perhaps - but I already knew I would not forgive him, for that, or for anything else.

“Cytherea was my fault,” he said. Finally something we could agree on. “She was the very best of all of us. The most loyal, the most humane, the most resilient. The one with the most capacity for kindness. I made her live ten thousand years in pain, because I was selfish and she let me. Don’t despise her, Gideon. What she did was unforgivable. I can’t understand it. But who she was… she was wonderful.”

Still, I said nothing, and still, he kept talking. He clearly wasn’t picking up on the vibe in the room.

“I wish she’d spoken to me, if she and I had just fought this out, it would have been a hell of a lot better for everyone.” He stopped, for a moment, lost in thought, but my respite was brief. Presently, he continued. “Most of my Lyctors have been destroyed by a war I’ve thought best to fight slowly, through attrition. I have lost my Hands.” Would you believe, Harrow, that it was this, finally, which made me remember my own lost hand, and the arm lost alongside it? I tuned out the rest of what he said as I raised both my hands in front of me and discovered - like the icing on the gigantic cake of awfulness I’d been choking down since I woke - that the right was not mine. 

It was pale - more Coronabeth than Ianthe, but far paler than the rest of me - and had none of my scars, none of my callouses. I inspected further, dismayed to find that my new bicep was lacklustre, disappointing, no match at all for the one I’d lost. Worse, the light dusting of hair on the forearm was… blonde. 

I’d suffered plenty of indignities in my life, Harrow - you know, you were there for most of them, in fact, you _caused_ most of them - but I’d be damned if I let them make me blonde. An irrational terror struck me, and I cast around the room, looking for a mirror. There was one on another wall, and I hurried over to it. The plague of horrid yellow hair had not infected the rest of me; my hair was the same vivid red it had always been, but my relief was short-lived; for my eyes were gone, and in their place…

I knew those eyes. They say the Ninth has a type, and I can’t deny it. The only people in the Ninth with eyes of any colour but black were your great-aunts (and probably, underneath the milky film of cataracts, their eyes had been black too), and Sister Glaurica. But even if there’d been a thousand people on the Ninth, a million, I’d have recognised _your_ eyes.

Staring back at me from the mirror were the eyes I’d loved. I had been content knowing that these eyes were the last thing I’d ever see. _You always did have to get the last word in, didn’t you?_

The abominable blondness of my alien limb brought to mind another, even more obnoxious blonde, and I spoke at last. I think maybe I interrupted God - I wasn’t paying attention, but when I try to remember this moment, I do recall a faint irritating buzz, like flies around a corpse, so I assume he was still talking when I piped up.

“Where are the others?” I asked. _If he’d ‘disappeared’ them to keep his sordid little secrets - if he’d hurt the Fourth, or the Fifth…_ My mind shied away from thoughts of the Sixth, remembering the blast, Camilla’s cry, Dulcie’s sobbing. “Who else lived?”

“Ianthe Tridentarius,” said the Emperor, “though she isn’t coherent yet. She’s having a… tough time… adjusting.”

I had no sympathy for her. Even had _sympathy for Ianthe Tridentarius_ been among my skillset - and it most definitely was not - I was having a… tough time… adjusting myself, and had no sympathy to spare.

I waited, but for the first time, the Emperor seemed to have no more to say. 

“That’s all?” I was taken aback, in spite of myself. “What of the rest?”

“Ianthe was the only one recovered alive. The rest… well, there was a fairly major explosion; we weren’t able to recover all of the bodies.”

_“What?”_

“All the Houses will have questions tonight,” he said. “I can hardly blame them. I’m sorry, Gideon, we couldn’t recover your cavalier either.”

My brain listed sharply. I think - despite the way your death was written in my eyes, in the quiet empty pool of power within me - part of me still believed it would be possible to spool you out from me, and bring you back. It was rank stupidity; we were well and truly integrated, but it was this - the loss of your body - which finally brought it home to me that you were gone beyond any hope of retrieval.

I hope you know, Harrow, that I will hate you forever, for what you did.

The joke is still on me though. I’ll hate you forever - but I’ll love you for even longer than that.


	62. Two

God finally did get the point, as I staggered back to the gurney and laid myself down, pulling the blanket over myself until even my head was covered - hiding your eyes from him, because the God who caused your death did not deserve to look into them. He left, but my respite was brief. He returned some time later, and I would have continued to ignore him, but he brought my sword. I had rolled from the gurney and taken it from him before I knew what I was doing, but the sight of my sword in his hands irked me in ways I can’t quite articulate. It was simply… wrong.

“I’m sorry, Gideon,” he said, and he did sound sorry, but sorry like someone who had spilled a drink over you by accident; barely sorry at all. More like a mild chagrin. “If I had it my way, it would take months, not weeks. I would let you come back bit by bit, until you felt entirely ready to wake up. I can’t. I mastered Death, Gideon; I wish I’d done the smarter thing and mastered Time. I have to ask you to get ready soon, and so I am going to show you something I hope might… trigger your readiness.”

Unless what he was about to show me was you, Harrow, whole and alive, then I had the feeling he was going to be rather disappointed in my _readiness_. But I was curious in spite of myself, so I belted my sword on over my ridiculous hospital smock, and followed him. The elevator took full minutes to sail through the enormity of the _Erebos._ Minutes of awkward silence. When it was obvious, even to the King Undying, Lord over the River and Prince of Total Obliviousness, that I wasn’t in an especially chatty mood, he pulled out his tablet and started tapping away with a stylus. 

Coming here from the decrepit Ninth, via mouldering, ramshackle Canaan House, I’d never seen anything so fresh and new as this ship. Everywhere I looked was some variety of ornamentation, or unnecessary decadence; and here I’d thought a military ship would be more spartan. There was lovely silver-and-black chasing on the metal boards, and inlaid panels of rainbow colour everywhere. The skull above the door to the elevator had been fashioned by some artistic adept into the skull of the First; someone else’s bones had been beautifully moulded into that sign with the eight answering houses around it. The skull of the Ninth looked plain and silent next to the others; it reminded me of you. Inside the elevator, soft dark hangings obscured the plex and metal, and the antiquated LED gleam of electronics.

Then the doors whispered open to a cavernous, echoing space where an overhead speaker was announcing, _“Our God the Emperor sees fit to grace the second cargo hold,”_ and I perceived many people moving away - stray Cohort officers in their white jackets making themselves scarce, bowing quickly, stopping their work to leave their lord in privacy. Their scuttling footsteps sounded like fleeing animals, and didn’t reassure me. 

We were on a steel-frame balcony overlooking a field of hundreds and hundreds of oblong boxes. Each was a body long and half a body tall, and all were constructed of bone - their lines and ranks so dizzyingly even that they didn’t look quite real. The chill breeze of the recyc air ruffled my smock and goose-pimpled my thighs, and I resolved to ask about real clothes as soon as I could. The bone of the boxes gleamed less purely white than the amalgam metal and plasticised panels that made up the sides of the hold, and the bone was topped with a soft transparent skin so taut and fine I could see through it. 

“What is this?” I asked.

God said, “I know you became a Lyctor under duress.”

“That’s one way to put it.” I said, icily.

“You aren’t the first,” said the Emperor. “But - listen to me. I will do what I haven’t done in ten thousand years and renew your House.” Amazing, that he could reveal that he knew the secret our House had been so jealously guarding, Harrow, and in the same breath display such profound misunderstanding of what I would want to _do_ about it. Taking my stunned silence for gratitude, perhaps, or worshipful reverence, he kept talking. “I’ll safeguard the Ninth. I will make sure what happened at Canaan House never happens again. But I want you to come with me. You can learn to be my Hand. The Empire can gain another Saint, and the Empire needs another Saint, more than ever. I have teachers - well, _a_ teacher, hopefully more - for you, and a whole universe for you to hold on to - for just a little while longer.”

I said nothing. 

“Or - you can go back home again,” he said. “ I have not assumed you’ll agree with me. I will not force you or buy you. I will keep covenant with your House whether you come with me or stay at home.”

This surprised me - which is to say, I didn’t believe him. Still, the scurrying, scuttling Cohort officers had been a stark reminder that this was _God_ I was talking to, and the sort of disobedient flippancy I’d direct towards Crux, for example, might get me into deeper waters here than I could tread. I wasn’t going to throw away the life you’d given me, even if I wasn’t yet ready to do anything with it. So I didn’t answer straight away; instead I asked: “Why make this offer to me? You said it - you haven’t renewed a House in ten thousand years. Why the Ninth? Why now?”

“Gideon,” he said, gently, “I feel like we haven’t gotten off on the best foot, you and I. I want to try and fix that; after all, we’ve got a long time ahead of us. With your eldest brother and sister… well, I hold out hope, but they haven’t been heard from in some time, and there’s been a spot of bother with one of the fleets. Insurgents… and well, none of that needs to be any of your concern right now. But with Cytherea dead, the Saint of Patience and the Saint of Joy missing, I shall have to rely on you and Ianthe far sooner, and more heavily, than I would like. I’ve even had to call home the Saint of Duty - it was he who recovered the two of you from the ruins of Canaan House.”

“The Ninth is dying,” I said. “It has been for years.”

“I know.”

“You know, and yet you’ve never made any offer of help before this.” Despite my plan to not anger _God,_ it was hard to keep my temper, remembering late nights spent pouring over the ledgers with Crux, how the grief of each death was cut with the most horrible undercurrent of relief at having one less mouth to feed. Where had God been when Harrow’s parents had been so desperate for an heir that they’d _murdered_ two hundred of their own? The blame for that would always lie at the feet of Pelleamena and Priamhark, but just a few years of being responsible for the Ninth had filled me with such crushing, hopeless despair that I could only begin to imagine how much more profoundly it would have weighed on me after a decade, or two, or longer. 

“You never asked.”

“Well, I’m not asking now.” I took a deep breath, knowing in my heart that what I was about to do was right, but also knowing that your parents, and even you, Harrow, would probably never understand, and never forgive me for it. “The Ninth died a long time ago, if I’m being honest; what’s left now is no more than agonal breathing. If you truly want to help my people, let them leave; order the other Houses to accept them, when the time comes and the Ninth can no longer sustain them. In ten years - twenty at most - there will be less than a handful of people left living on the Ninth, and they deserve better than to die there alone.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to this.

“And I should be there. Please send me back to the Ninth,” - words I honestly never thought I’d utter - “my place is with my congregation.”

There it was - the averted gaze, the uncomfortable twist of the lips. The offer to return me to the Ninth had been a bluff. What I’d suspected since I’d first had the faintest inkling of what Lyctorhood would mean; I’d never go home. 

“To choose in ignorance is no choice,” he said at last. “Listen -” 

He went to half-lean against a nearby bulkhead. “Gideon, what happens when somebody dies?”

A dozen thoughts crossed my mind, memories of candlelit vigils, the lavender-and-rot smell of the scented tallow candles used only for services and deaths. The prayers, and the funeral; cleaning the body; cleaning the bones. But that wasn’t what he meant. 

“The thanergy bloom; apopneumatism.” I supplied, hoping that wherever he was going with this was somewhere we’d get to soon; his presence was becoming intolerable, in a multitude of ways. I hated him, and wanted to scream, and curse, even attack him, but worse, every time he looked at me, held my gaze, it pinned me in place. When those white rings hovered somewhere else, the blood rushed back to my brain and I could think; when they flickered back to me I went white and blank, mute and stupid, and I found my will bending to him. I _wanted_ to listen, wanted to sympathise, even wanted to _adore_. He’d been God for far longer a time than I could possibly begin to comprehend, and the holiness lay around him like a shroud. So, even as I fought to hold my temper, I also fought to keep a grip on my hatred.

“Why?” His eyes flickered back to me, and I couldn’t speak. “Thalergetic decay causes cellular death…” he prompted.

Somehow I found my voice, and my answer was as much the frantic desperation of prey before predator as anything else. I wanted to answer his questions so he would leave; I was barely even listening to what he was actually saying. “… which emits thanergy,” I blurted out, “the massive cell death that follows apopneumatism causes a thanergetic cascade, though the first bloom fades and the thanergy stabilises within thirty to sixty seconds.”

He nodded. “And what happens to the soul?”

I answered as promptly as if I was six again, and Priamhark was standing over me with the belt, ready to punish any hesitation or error. “In the case of gradual death - senescence, illness… certain other forms - transition is automatic and straightforward. The soul is pulled into the River by liminal osmosis. In cases of apopneumatic shock, where death is sudden and violent, the energy burst can be sufficient to countermand osmotic pressure and leave the soul temporarily isolated. Whence we gain the ghost, and the revenant.”

I wasn’t going to last the distance, Harrow. Again, I wished you’d done what I asked - not whatever it was you _had_ done - and it had been you here, not me. This sort of necromantic theory was far more your sort of thing than mine. I could hear Palamedes, even now, chiding my ignorance of basic necromancy. “Uh… anything with a thalergetic complexity significant enough to… have a soul. So, humanity.”

The Emperor drummed his fingertips atop the railing before him, and he said, a little whimsically: _“Why have we not an immortal soul? I would give gladly all the hundreds of years that I have to live, to be a human being only for one day.”_

This threw me utterly, but he was staring out over the ranks of coffins with a vague melancholy, and his gaze was not upon me, so I had enough wit about me to say: “What?”

“Gideon, think,” he said, looking back at me - which did _not_ make me think, and in fact, had quite the opposite effect - “What else has an enormously complex mass of thalergy? What’s the role of a Cohort necromancer?”

My brain bowed out disgracefully. I shrugged. I knew the purpose of a Cohort swordswoman, having looked into it in the vain hope that you’d listen to Aiglamene’s suggestion that you join the Cohort. They provided the death and the thanergy to begin the cycle for necromantic magic to work. Foreign planets were never thanergy planets; they possessed dilute thanergy, of course, but fundamentally they were thalergenic in character. Send a necromancer down there and she would be largely useless. 

“What about a planet?” He said, clearly still hoping to spur me on to some profound realisation which yet eluded me.

“A planet’s a ball of dust. Its thalergy comes from the stuff living on it. You can’t consider a planet to be a single entity.”

“Call it a communal soul,” said God. “What’s a human being, other than a sack of microbial life? You’re a bone adept, aren’t you? Flesh magicians are exposed to this idea of a system earlier than in your school -” I forbore to mention that I practiced flesh magic too. No reason to give him more cause to think I was suffering with - _what was it you called it, Harrow, when we were children? Brain malfunction? -_ He mistook my abashed silence for disbelief and said: “Just accept the proposition for now that a planet has an enormous single amount of thalergy. If this thalergy is converted, what might happen during that transition?”

“Nothing _happens,_ ” I insisted, “plant and animal life both change, of course. And eventually the planet flips totally and the population has to be moved, but that’s such a long-term process that it takes generations. Not exactly something _happening.”_

“Now kill the planet all at once,” said the Emperor. “What then?”

I looked at him, unwillingly - I had been trying to avoid his gaze. “You tell me. You were there for the Resurrection.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I saw the thalergy convert immediately. The difference between dying of illness and dying from murder. An enormous shock, the immediate expulsion of the soul. And just as when a soul is ripped untimely from a human being, when a soul is so rudely taken from a planet-”

I started to sweat. “A revenant?”

“Always a revenant,” he said. “Every single time, a god-damned revenant. Pardon the pun.”

Well, I had to give him that one. Puns _are_ funny.


	63. Three

Later, in my room, I struggled with the new information. I had been right - I was never going home. I didn’t even know if I wanted to go back to the Ninth, Harrow. I hated it there. I hated everything it represented. I’d been miserable there.

But you had been there. Drearburh’s dark, hateful halls were filled with my memories of you. There was nothing on this ship of you, and irrationally, I was scared of you slipping away from me; you were already so far gone, buried so deep in me, and I couldn’t bear to lose more of you. I lay down and closed my eyes against the bright, clinical glow of the lights, and I thought of you, picturing your face, your hands, your sure step and straight back, trying to fix every memory of you in my mind.

Eventually, I slept, and in my dreams, you were alive again.

It should have taken you a moment, to realise where you were. After all, you were staring at a nondescript ceiling, and it was dimly lit at that, but you’d recognise Drearburh from even that small vista of cracked and crumbling stone. Even if you hadn’t, the smell was unmistakable: the smell of dying nuns and dead ones, of boiled bones and boiled snow leeks. The smell of despair, and of home. I should have known that smell would haunt even my dreams. 

You couldn’t move. That should have been a concern, but you were strangely calm, as though your mind had been rendered as inert as your body. So I knew it must be a dream; there was no power in the universe that could stop that mind of yours from churning. Of equally little concern to you was the tang of blood in the air, the sticky wetness around your hands, and the odd whistling as you breathed -  _ ah, you were still breathing. _

You heard voices. These were of as little interest to you as your paralysis was concern, but you had nothing else to listen to.

“We got it wrong, Joy.”

An inchoate shriek of rage and grief and frustration cut through the air. Clearly someone wasn’t feeling so chill about things as you were. Well - the state I was in, it was hardly surprising that my dreams contained a spot of screaming, so I really think you ought to give me a break.

A second voice. From the sound of it, this voice was either the source of the scream, or the Ninth was positively crowded with hysterics. “We can’t have! We did everything right. The blood, the thanergy cascade. It should have worked!”

“But it didn’t; ergo, we got it wrong.”

“But the eyes!” So, I guess my subconscious was having a perfectly understandable freak-out about eyes. I wasn’t relishing the thought of your eyes looking back at me in the mirror for all eternity, reminding me of everything I’d lost; if I could only keep a single part of you, Harrow, I would have kept your smile, that rare smile, or perhaps it would have been the secretly lush bow of your lips, which no one but me ever saw in their full glory, un-camouflaged by paint. I’d even have kept your freezing cold feet on my skin, in the middle of the night, before I chose to keep those eyes; those eyes that I could look into for a myriad and never again see you looking back. 

I’m lying, Harrow. I wouldn’t have kept a  _ single _ thing - because I wouldn’t willingly have given a single thing up. 

The voice which had been calm was calm no longer. It was making a noise that was nearly laughter; it was nearly not laughter at all.

“We were  _ kidding  _ ourselves, Joy. The centuries are getting to us - we must be just as mad as Gideon, the poor old sod” - rude, but not altogether inaccurate. I was hardly feeling the picture of sanity. “I know, I thought it too. I nearly  _ died  _ when I saw those eyes; especially with the way she came running up to the shuttle, brandishing that arm like a madwoman. I thought it was Alecto, finally come for me, but I was wrong. And we must have been just as wrong about the child. I mean really - she hardly looks at all like John, or like you, and I know you used your own ova for the dummies. It’s a coincidence. Nothing more.”

“A coincidence?” The other voice scoffed, but it sounded calmer now, defeated. “Lipochrome.  _ Recessive.  _ Have you seen those eyes on anyone,  _ ever, _ in the whole empire? Or BoE, for that matter? They’re too unique for coincidence.”

“Not coincidence then. Anastasia was mad herself, by the end. Who knows what genes she spliced into her awful little tomb cult. The only real surprise is that Alecto  _ had  _ any genetic material to splice. I’d have put hard cash down against it.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We keep going, my dear, as we always have. We go away - one last almighty bender, a toast to our foolishness, and then we’ll go running home with our tails between our legs, and prepare to fight. Chin up, Joy; there’s only three of us left. The next time the heralds come a-calling, odds are that our time will finally have come, and then we can rest.”

You closed your eyes on the strange, bleak resignation in that voice, and as your eyes closed, mine opened once more to crisp white sheets, and the velvety blackness of space, beyond, the dream already fading from my mind, as dreams always do.

It would have been neater, perhaps, if all of my disappointments and woes from birth downward had used this moment as a catalyst: if, filled with a new and fiery determination, I had equipped myself in this coolly sterile lighting with fresh ambition - to honour your memory, perhaps, or otherwise to avenge your death. I didn’t. I got the depression.

I lay in my hospital bed, picking at life like it was a meal I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t touch my sword or explore my new surroundings. I didn’t even fall back on my old favourite, in times of boredom, of crunching my body into sit-ups and press-ups to make the time go away; the new right arm was not-quite-right at all. Beyond being blonde, it  _ felt _ wrong, and consequently  _ I  _ felt unbalanced. So I barely moved at all. I just lay there, staring into the black void with your black eyes, and sleeping as much as I could manage, because in dreaming, sometimes I could forget that you were gone.

A week’s grace was all I got. God turned up, as he  _ always goddamn did,  _ standing outside the open door to my room, but this time, he wasn’t alone.

“Gideon,” God said - but he wasn’t speaking to me. Instead, he looked at the man beside him. I hadn’t felt him coming, any more than I felt God’s approach, or Ianthe’s, the time she’d come and drawled at me, words I refused to listen to enough to understand; I’d gnawed angrily at my lip until I broke the skin, and then spat blood at her - she left after that. 

I could only assume, then, that this new man, this walking emptiness, was a Lyctor, though he had nothing of the hungry, soft necromancer build; his frame carried nothing but muscle. He was sinew over bone. He was a walking tendon. He had a raw, stretched look to him like an idiot’s construct, bones that had been slippered in meaty fibrils to keep them moving. A metabolised, contracted striation, without fat, the only curve a hollow tautness from rib to stomach. 

The Emperor continued to speak to the new arrival, sounding so genuinely distressed as to catch my attention: “We’ve still no word. They wouldn’t have been on the warships, surely?”

“No way to tell, with radiation missiles.” This new Lyctor’s voice was as gnarled and rough-hewn as his body.

“And you’re certain there was no sign of them at all on the First?”

“None,” came the blunt response from that blunt brown face, skin too close to the skull, all shabby defeated features with its lineaments more temporalis muscle than anything else. His skull was a bumpy, knobbled, close-capped thing, hair shaven nearly to the bone - he’d have fit right in on the Ninth with that hair - though, maybe not, for it was not black or brown, but gleamed a dull and unappealing russet, like a vague and bloody shadow on his head.

The eyes I could not see, because…

“Hey!” I exclaimed, the first word I’d spoken in days. “Those are  _ my _ sunglasses.”


	64. Four

The Lyctor who’d stolen my sunglasses did not give them back, and did come in to speak to me, which sucked on both counts. 

“Listen to your older brother,” God had said, with that sad smile he always insisted on directing towards me. “He’s going to help you.”

Then God left, and the sunglass-thief was walking towards me.

“Get up,” he said, which was something of a shock to the system after days of God awkwardly pussyfooting around me. And whatever that nonsense with Ianthe had been. In that moment, the Lyctor reminded me just a bit of Aiglamene - but I hardened my heart, and refused to let this resemblance endear him to me. I was being a petty little bitch, and I knew it, but I didn’t care.

I also didn’t get up.

Harrow - those muscles of his were not just for show. He came over to the bed and _picked me up!_ It became rapidly clear that my two options were to stand up, or be dropped in an unceremonious heap. I stood.

“Are you a Lyctor, or not?”

“I didn’t _want_ to be a Lyctor,” I huffed. The hands still holding my shoulders tightened, as if their owner was seriously considering shaking me.

“Not what I asked,” he said. “Your mother would be ashamed that you’d grown into a sulky brat.”

“How would you know? You don’t know my mother. _I_ don’t even know my mother.” I hadn’t planned on inviting this asshole to attend _Gideon’s Trauma 101_ , but it just slipped out. Staring into your eyes, reflected in those mirrored lenses, was destroying my ability to think.

( _Not that I was any good at thinking, to start with_ , I know. I don’t have you around to insult me anymore, so I guess I’m going to have to start holding up both ends of the conversation.)

The Lyctor only snorted at me, and backed up, leaning against the door frame. 

“Come on, sleepy.” He smirked at the name, as if it was some kind of clever joke, “John can’t hang around here much longer, which means it’s my job to get you ready for the River. You and the other one.”

At _the other one,_ I scowled, interested - in spite of myself - to see that the Lyctor did the same. Ianthe was already making friends, it seemed.

“And if I don’t want to get ready for anything?” 

Look, I’m technically still a teenager, so really, I don’t feel that anyone ought to blame me for acting like one. The Lyctor did not agree. 

“Then I kill you,” he said, flatly, any humour utterly gone from his voice. I’d thought he sounded dour before, but it turned out he had untapped depths of surliness, because now he was downright grim. “We can’t risk the safety of the whole empire because you’re having a tantrum. Now are you coming with me, or should I hold your sword for you to fall on it and die with honour?”

I was fairly certain that he wasn’t being serious. At the very least, I’d seen Cytherea keep fighting with a knife in her gut - I doubted that falling on a sword would kill me. But, in that moment, I had no inclination to find out. It wasn’t that I wanted to live, but however angry I was with you, I wasn’t going to waste your sacrifice by throwing our life away.

“Fine, I’ll come. Can I have some clothes first?”

A few minutes later I was dressed in a plain shirt and trousers, my two-hander a familiar, comforting weight on my belt. I ignored the stupid iridescent robe which had been left out for me - on the grounds that if I had to spend the next ten thousand years looking like Silas Octakiseron had vomited glitter on me, I’d start seriously reconsidering the falling-on-a-sword option. I followed the shrink-wrapped Lyctor out of the room. He led me down brightly lit hallways churning with smartly-dressed Cohort officers, each of whom was a distracting seethe of thanergy and thalergy, making the freeze-dried void of a person I followed seem even more unnatural.

It turned out that his idea of getting us ready for the River was… sparring. The Lyctor led me to a vast training room, empty except for…

“Ianthe,” I said, my tone not terribly friendly.

“Gideon,” she acknowledged, and then turned to the Lyctor and said, “and Gideon.”

“Wait,” I said, my sleep-muddled mind finally catching up, “ _you’re_ Gideon?”

“Original and best, also known as the Saint of Duty.” the Lyctor - Gideon - confirmed. Ianthe snorted. I ignored them both, thinking. This, then, was the explanation for the flimsy I’d found which had so shaken me. The ‘ _ease give Gideon my’_ which had felt so explosively dangerous. The _Gideon_ of the note had been one of the original Lyctors. Before I could think about this too much, Ianthe walked over to me, _right_ over to me, holding out her hand, and when I didn’t take it, she stepped even closer, and slipped something into my pocket.

“She wanted you to have it,” Ianthe said, somewhat irritably. “Read it later.”

Gideon - Gideon the First, _wait, no, I was Gideon the First, too, now._ Gideon the Second? For I recalled that the Lyctor laboratory which had been Gideon’s had also contained a Second House seal. But then, I was the second Gideon to ascend, so ‘Gideon the Second’ was also unhelpfully ambiguous. Gideon the absolute _git,_ I thought, somewhat uncharitably. Perhaps I should call him _Giteon._ He handed me a plain rapier, and a chain, and then I was facing Ianthe.

“Seven paces, all moves legal, to the floor.” Gideon (old-style) said. 

The duel began, and I raised the rapier, and I felt… nothing.

You’d gone too far, Harrow. Buried yourself too deeply. There was no familiarity to the weight of the rapier in my right hand. I could, perhaps, have attributed this to my blonde impostor, my awful cuckoo right arm, were it not for the fact that the chain hung unwieldy and just as foreign in my left. I recalled how Ianthe had fought with Jeannemary’s unmistakable skill, and waited for you to come to me and fill me with your expertise, but there was nothing at all. You were gone completely.

Still, I gave it my best go. The chain I essentially ignored, knowing that in my novice’s grip, it was as likely to injure me as anything else, but I lashed out with the rapier, trying to adjust to feeling so unbalanced, my hands being sisters, not twins. I was doing a piss-poor job, and the match would have ended almost instantly, had I not found Ianthe to be in the same predicament.

Coronabeth had been no cavalier, it’s true, but she’d known her way around a rapier. She’d been good - her deficits being essentially the same as mine: that a necromancer would never be given the chance to practice enough to become a master with a sword. But I was not fighting Coronabeth’s skill in Ianthe’s body. I was only fighting Ianthe, and while I had no knowledge of the rapier, I had at least held a sword. I knew approximately what to do with my feet. I had the strength to hold the blade without locking my elbow - more than enough strength for that, because a rapier felt as light and ineffectual as a knitting needle to me, accustomed as I was to greater weight. 

It was inelegantly done, more a wrestling match than anything else, but before long I’d brought Ianthe to the floor. 

“Again!” came Gideon’s irritated drill-sergeant shout. We got to our feet, and repeated the debacle, fully seven more times, neither of us showing any increase in proficiency. 

“Look,” I said as we were lining up for a ninth bout, “this is stupid. I don’t know what sparring has to do with preparing us for the River, or whatever it is you said, but if you want me to fight, I’d do a lot better with my longsword.”

“Did your cavalier fight with a longsword?”

“No; rapier and chain.”

“Then that is how you fight. I’m not testing your skill - and a good job, because if I were, I’d have tossed you both out an airlock already - but your integration. While John wishes to coddle the two of you for a century or five, we don’t have time. You weren’t recruited to sleep, and sulk,” this was directed at me, before he turned to Ianthe, “or to murder a dozen good soldiers while finding new and exciting ways to disgorge the contents of your stomach. You are here to fight for the Empire, and right now, what the Empire requires of you is that you work to overcome the spiritual constipation you are suffering from, and properly integrate with the spirits of your deceased cavaliers.”

“Still think I’d do better with my longsword,” I muttered. 

“You’d do better without it weighing you down. I don’t know why John even gave it to you. I told him… Nevermind. If your cav didn’t carry one, you shouldn’t be carrying one now. Take it off and put it over there, and then get set up for another match.”

Grudgingly, I did as I was told, and then returned to the training floor. I wasn’t getting any better with a rapier, but I was getting better at tackling Ianthe, who was looking queasier by the moment. She was doing a better job of pretending to be her typical diffident and untouchable self than she was of handling her weapons, but still the cracks were showing. Ianthe was not well.

We fought a couple more times, and I started to notice that the Lyctor was barely watching us, and instead seemed transfixed with my two-hander, where it lay on a bench. He started walking towards it, and I was so distracted by this that Ianthe actually landed a blow - her first of the day - drawing a gash down my side that healed up almost before I’d become aware of it. My response was pure instinct; I punched her, forgetting that I still had a length of chain wrapped around my left hand. Ianthe went down hard, and for a moment, she didn’t move.

“Enough!” said Gideon, sounding utterly disgusted, his attention thankfully diverted from my sword. “Get up. Ianthe, bow to your younger sister; she bested you - again. That’s enough for today. We go again tomorrow.”

Ianthe smirked at me as she clambered to her feet. She bowed, and as she did, I noticed that her eye was puffy, starting to swell where I’d hit her. Where the blow she’d landed on me had healed automatically and instantaneously, the same could not be said for Ianthe.

While I was still wondering about this, she bowed sketchily. “A delight as always, Gideon. You know, my whole life I wished that I’d had a sister instead. Brothers are no fun.” She sneered in Gideon’s general direction, and stalked from the room.

That was the moment I realised there was something very wrong with Ianthe.


	65. Five

The next dream I had about you was just as strange, albeit with more variation in the scenery. 

I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, because against my overriding, all-consuming, most primary of complaints - that you’d somehow contrived to leave me, forever, after you swore that you wouldn’t - some unsatisfying dreams are an obnoxiously trivial issue. But this was all I had of you: your eyes, and these dreams. So would it have been so much to ask, for these dreams to be a bit less Drearburh, and a bit more, I don’t know, dishabille?

If you were here, you’d call me an idiot for still talking to you like this. But you aren’t here. You gave up your chance to have a say, when you gave up your life. Sorry, them’s just the breaks.

You were in the morgue at Drearburh, concentrating hard on the back of your neck, where _something_ had been done to your dorsal root. You had assumed it must have been severed, which would have been the simplest way to incapacitate you, but you realised all at once that it had been _tied into a knot._ It had been bowed out, twisted, and looped. You had no idea how it had been managed, or why the people who had taken you would go to such pains and then simply leave you, but you contemplated letting it be; lying here, and waiting to die.

 _If I were dead, maybe I’d see her again…_ you thought, but knew it to be the worst kind of delusion. She was not merely dead, but gone - consumed. You’d committed the ultimate sin, glutted yourself on the death of the person you’d loved, and sworn to protect, and now you were replete, gorged with power, and utterly miserable. Through your misery, though, you were still determined that her sacrifice would not be wasted. Grief formed a bone hook at the back of your superior articular facet; rage drove it forward, caught the loop, and withdrew it backward, as though unknitting your nerves. The scythe of pain that swept over the back of your scalp would have made you sick, had you been capable of even that much movement, but still you felt that it hurt less than it should, as though your pain receptors had also been tinkered with.

You squeezed the nerve flat with the muscles around it, and wedged the minute hook back into your spinal mass where it belonged. This resulted in a whole-body case of pins and needles so profound that all you could do was thrash like a fish on the end of a line. Your thrashing dislodged something which had been lying beside you on the mortuary slab. It fell to the floor with a meaty _thunk_. When your body was once more under your conscious control, you sat up to take stock of your surroundings. 

The mortuary was fuller than you’d ever seen it; almost every slab had a body. Corpses were hardly unusual on the Ninth, but there were so many; and - you realised - they had been felled not by age or infirmity, but by violence. Many bore rapier-wounds, while still others seemed outwardly untouched, but inside were a disgusting soup of liquefied organs, as though an invisible hand had reached into them and muddled everything from sternum to sacrum into a smooth paste. Your new awareness stretched out beyond the miasma of mortality in the room to encompass the whole of Drearburh, and you were relieved to note that your House was merely decimated, not destroyed; you were assaulted by the sensory data from four hundred and seven pulmonary muscles. Every body in the Ninth felt like the awareness of a meal cooking, a good smell, a pillar of something hot and rich. Their thanergy and thalergy rippled in and around each other like a bloom, or like light playing over metal. They were so few, and yet, in this moment, also so overwhelmingly many. 

So many, in fact, that you didn’t notice two of those beating hearts getting closer until the door creaked open. A bundle of cloth fell to the floor - sacramental shrouds, from the look of things - and Ortus stared at you with shock. 

“Aiglamene!” He quavered, and you heard the _step-thump_ of Aiglamene’s gait coming closer, at increasing speed. With Ortus’ bulk blocking the doorway, the Captain of the Guard could not see into the room until she gave him a shove. He nearly tripped over his dropped linens, eyes still fixed on you, not his feet, but he managed to step away without falling. If Aiglamene was surprised to see you up and awake, she covered it better than Ortus had. Perhaps she was simply too exhausted to be stunned; for the first time you could recall, Aiglamene looked old to you, and fallible, and small. Was it the months away from the Ninth that allowed you to look at your old teacher with new eyes, instead of seeing her as you always had, through the lens of childhood; or had some mighty blow come to fell her spirit, as devastatingly as the rapier thrust which had slaughtered the body on the slab next to yours?

“Well, you’ve picked one hell of a time to come back, Harrow, but I can’t say I’m sad to see you. We need all the help we can get. Help us with these bodies, and then we’ll go and talk.”

With no further ado, she bent to pick up the pile of cloth, and levered herself painfully back upright. She handed some of her burden back to Ortus, and tossed half of the remainder to you; you caught it automatically. Aiglamene and Ortus began moving between the slabs, respectfully draping shrouds over those bodies which had been uncovered; the sudden influx of dead had clearly necessitated the retrieval of additional shrouds - from the hacked and unhemmed edges of the cloths you held, it was clear that this fabric had been hastily repurposed.

As you walked from bier to bier, the mass of death which you had initially been able to appreciate only as a whole became made up of many tragic parts, and tears pricked at your eyes before you impatiently blinked them away. 

Here lay Sister Loryngha, who had noticed you when you had been only five, a fretful child and newly shunned by the family and House who had birthed you. She had seen you gnawing at your cuticles, and given you the gloves which you wore, even now, a comforting barrier keeping the harsh world at a more tolerable remove. Brother Staustas, who had worked in the kitchens, and always remembered to give you your food plain, with none of the salty black sauce which assaulted you with overwhelming flavour. Deurina, who may never have been kind to you, but at least had never been cruel. And so many more.

Then, the small cluster of bodies closest where you had lain. These had already been covered, but now you uncovered them, finding the cruel, patrician features of your father, who even in death seemed to be scowling. Mortus the Ninth, who had taken no fewer than seven blows to the chest before he fell. And Crux. Crux who had always been kind, though he spent his kindness like it was a precious coin, and to be given to you it must first be taken from another; the other frequently having been Ortus, or the Reverend Daughter.

It was too much. You backed away until your legs were against the slab where you had been laid to rest when they'd thought you were dead as well, and there you sagged, sinking to the ground, unable to process so much loss, on top of the devastation you had already sustained. On the ground next to you was an arm. This arm you would have recognised instantly, even without the distinctive scattering of red hair; thicker on the forearm, almost invisibly fine on the bicep (a bicep which was objectively splendid). That arm had held you in the night, kept you safe from the terrors of the darkness. That hand, with its broad palm and long fingers, had touched you and eased your pain.

The tears that had threatened would no longer be kept at bay. You sobbed, and hated yourself for it. No one on the Ninth had ever seen you cry; you would never have allowed yourself such weakness. It was only in this moment that you understood how profoundly your time at Canaan House had transformed you. All the things which had felt so brave and so strong in those alien, sunlit rooms suddenly became treacherous, dangerous vulnerabilities - the way you’d allowed yourself to be befriended by Jeannemary, had grown accustomed to speaking your mind around companions who cared to hear those thoughts, and how you had worked to build a bridge across the chasm which lay between yourself and your adept; how you’d come so close to reaching the middle, newly certain that when you did she would be there, waiting for you.

You’d burned that bridge now; all that remained were embers, seething in the pit of your stomach. The power you’d wanted more than anything, at the cost of the person you’d wanted even more.

Harrow the Ninth was a hothouse flower, grown lush and beautiful from a surfeit of care, but you had been transported back to colder climes, meaner soil, drier air. It was time and past time for you to put her away, and don once more the mantle of Harrowhark Nova, dark and secretive daughter of a dark and secretive line. Living scion of a dying House. You had the Reverend Daughter’s power, and it was time to assume her responsibilities.

You dabbed at your face, careful to do no more damage to the wreckage of paint upon it. You got to your feet, and transferred the lost arm to the slab where you’d lain, covering it as tenderly and reverentially as you may.

“Take me to my mother,” you said.


	66. Six

Back in my room, I spent some time training with my sword, the familiar motions soothing some of my unease, even though my right arm did not respond as it ought to, and wrongness fizzed and seethed along the seam where it joined my shoulder. Gideon had insisted that I keep the rapier and chain, but these I put away, not wanting to look at them, and be reminded of how completely you had abandoned me. 

Then, some time later I recalled the thing Ianthe had slipped into my pocket.

It was a sealed note. On the outside was written:

_**Give this one to Gideon.** (Stupid-but-almost-cute Gideon, not the gnarly one). _

_(Ianthe - Do not read it before you give it to her. I mean it. I know you’ll try, so I’ve put a ward on it, and you’ll regret it if you try to break it. I am at least as brilliant as you - possibly very much more so, if things haven’t gone quite according to plan, so DO NOT CROSS ME.)_

I did not want to get dragged into any more Third House drama than I already had, but curiosity got the better of me, and I opened it.

_I know what you did, and you’re going to pay._

_Sorry, couldn’t resist the dramatic opening there. More specifically, I am aware that you are responsible for ripping the Fourth brat’s soul out of me, and thereby causing my sister’s death. Coronabeth’s blood is on your hands. But you can make it up to me, by doing the same thing again. I have made arrangements for Coronabeth’s body to be returned to me, discreetly, and when it is, I expect you to fix her._

_I am taking steps to ensure that Coronabeth’s spirit remains intact, and it is vitally important that you do not speak to me of her, or allow anyone else to do so, or the work I have done will be for nothing and she will be consumed. As far as God and the other Gideon are concerned, my cavalier was my twin brother, Naberius, and I insist that you do not correct them on this matter. I also will not recall the writing of this letter._

_I’m sure my dear sister has already made every effort to endear herself to you - she never could resist a moron with a sword - but even if you are inexplicably immune to her charms, I trust that your disgusting inability to keep from meddling will do the trick. And if that is not enough, I have your agreement. Oh, I know you weren’t listening when I talked to you, that’s why I’m writing you this little reminder, but I took the blood you so kindly donated to the cause and cursed you, and if you do not do everything in your power to bring my sister back to me then you will know every last agony I can devise - and I have quite the imagination._

_~ Ianthe_

_P.S. If I’d known you were a spitter, I mightn’t have let Corona stake her claim on you. If you feel like getting bloody with me again sometime, you know where to find me xoxoxoxoxo_

So, Ianthe’s lack of facility with her rapier was because she’d locked Corona’s spirit, and her expertise, away somewhere before she could be wholly consumed. For a moment, I had a glimmer of hope that I might do the same, and save you, but that hope guttered and died. It was too late for me to save you. I wasn’t unable to wield your sword because your skill had not yet become a part of me, as God and the Saint of Duty assumed, but because it had been burned up with the rest of you. It was not a dearth of integration we suffered from, but a surfeit. 

Harrow - I’m sorry. I was averagely good all my life. At least not criminally bad. I did a bunch of shit I’m not proud of - some of it I regret, some of it I don’t. I absolutely regret not kicking Crux down a flight of stairs and watching him go _Oof, ow, my bones_ down each step, which now that I think about it does not help the case I am making here - I wasn’t absolute garbage. Maybe you’d agree. But when I realised that Ianthe - _Ianthe -_ the bitch who’d killed Jeannemary, and whose actions, ultimately, had killed you too - was asking for my help…

I wanted to refuse. Curse be damned; I’d broken curses before, and I knew that no stupid curse could ever hurt as much as the pain of losing you. I wanted to do more than refuse. I wanted to stick a knife in her treacherous heart and carve a you-sized hole in her, like the one that was eating me up. 

But in a way, she was right. Coronabeth had tried, however clumsily, however manipulatively, to be my friend, and now she was dead, and I was at least part of the reason for her death. I owed it to her, if not to Ianthe, to help.

The Saint of Duty came back the next day, to force Ianthe and I through the same ridiculous motions of sparring. Neither of us was any better, though Ianthe’s face had, at least, healed overnight. I suspected she’d had to do it manually, based on what she’d written in the letter. As we flailed ineffectually with our rapiers, I found myself trying to work out exactly what she’d done. I had the impression that she’d simply erased all her knowledge and memories of Coronabeth, and thereby rendered herself unable to absorb what she could not understand; the problem she’d had with integrating Jeannemary’s spirit, taken to its logical conclusion. The real question was _how._ Unless the Third had been seriously holding out on the rest of us, even the most skilled flesh magician couldn’t just pluck thoughts from the fatty tissue of the brain, the way a cook plucks feathers from a chicken. Something physical then…

I was still pondering this when the Saint of Duty - taciturn today, rather than mocking, and no longer sporting my sunglasses, which I resolved to steal back at some point - closed his soft green eyes with a wince, as though struck by a sudden migraine, and called practice to a halt with a thunderous _Enough!_

I was slightly irritated at this, for I felt that I’d been making progress, and said as much.

“If the intention were for _you_ to gain facility with a rapier, then I would be teaching you. I could care less whether _you_ can carry a blade. You must finish becoming a Lyctor - and swiftly, so that you can safely navigate the River - which means learning to awaken the dead that reside within you.” This was all said without looking at me, or so much as opening his eyes. Perhaps he truly did have a migraine, for he fished around in a pocket, and pulled out my sunglasses.

“Now,” he said, more animated, “I’ve had about all I can stand of babysitting duty for the day, and I have errands to run.” And with that, he left. I had been thinking, and though I’d already resolved to help Ianthe bring Coronabeth back, if I could (which I was doubtful of. You’d already given me a heartbreaking demonstration of how quickly dissolution could occur with a willing soul, and where Jeannemary had fought, Coronabeth had not only gone willingly to the slaughter, it had been her hand upon the knife) - I wanted to do so of my own volition, and not because of whatever necromantic chain Ianthe had slipped around my neck.

Well, and, having only recently unburdened myself from the curse your mother put on me, I was not in any hurry to carry another. Since the curse had been made with my blood, I knew that I would need Ianthe’s blood to unmake it, and had been deliberately trying for some messy injuries during our practice today, but Ianthe was being fastidious to the point of paranoia; not just meticulously - and laboriously - sealing over her wounds, but reabsorbing each drop of blood shed, where it remained on her skin, or skeletonising it to the point of uselessness where it did not. As such, her clothes were fresh and unbloodied, the floor around her perfectly clean. I should have known to expect a Third scion to be cautious; she would not have survived in that House had she been in the habit of freely distributing her heart’s blood to any would-be assassin. 

I was going to need to get creative, and for the first time since you’d left me, I was glad you’d gone. You’d seen me naked, bleeding, dying. You’d seen me with my guts on the outside and with my arm in another room to the rest of me. You’d seen me entirely lose my shit over a harmless _bath._

Still… there are some things you should never see, Harrow, and this was most certainly about to be one of them.

Quickly, before Ianthe had the chance to react - and partly before I had the chance to think better of what I was doing and as such, not actually do it - I punched Ianthe in the face with as much force as I could muster. I felt several things crunch beneath my fist; Ianthe did not know how to move with a blow, and so it fell harder on her than it would have on someone with a fighter’s training, something I hadn’t considered, but couldn’t bring myself to regret. 

“That’s for Jeannemary,” I hissed. Then I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and kissed her.


	67. Seven

I was determined that she would not pull away until I had what I came for, and so I reached out to cup Ianthe’s face in my hands, feeling the left cheek already starting to swell. My mouth and eyes were screwing up, as though against the light, or a sour taste, but I forced myself to continue.

She hadn’t expected this - and how could she have, _what the fuck_ \- and her mouth froze against mine, which gave me time to work. I pressed the tip of my tongue to her lips, and then past them, into her mouth. As my tongue touched hers, she made a small, tight, half-wounded sound. I hoped she was trying to cry for help, but feared that the sound was nothing of the sort. Still, my ruse had worked - her teeth had cut into the flesh of her cheek when I hit her, and my actions since left her too surprised to react. I let my tongue explore her mouth, and the ragged leaking wounds within it, until I had taken sufficient of her blood into my own mouth for my purposes. And then I walked away, hurrying to return to my room.

I made it back, and locked the door. With the power you gave me, Harrow, it was the most trivial of tasks to separate Ianthe’s blood from my own spittle, and the little bit of bile which had forced its way up my throat, and before long I had a small cup of gore to show for my efforts. It was far less trivial a task to keep myself from retching further. No longer would I be able to say that the last lips which had touched mine were yours, and that was something I regretted more than I could truly comprehend. 

But then, what was one more regret? Fuck, Harrow, if regrets were desserts, I’d be glutted, gorged, as round as a goddamn planet by now. I was ugly and swollen with regret, livid and hot as a pricked boil. 

I contemplated the blood I held, tempted more than I can say to use it to attack Ianthe. I could have done it - I probably could even have killed her, although for all I knew, if I did this, her curse would take me down with her, and kill us both.

Still, it was so very tempting. I might even have done it, if I hadn’t suddenly been overcome with the feeling that something was _wrong._ It was a prickling down my spine, and it took me a moment to identify what was bothering me. 

My sword was gone. I’d left it on top of the dresser, when I’d gone to train that morning, at Gideon’s insistence, and now it wasn’t there any more. I remembered how Gideon had kept staring at the sword and I knew, I _knew,_ that he had stolen it. Forget the fact that I’d been with him almost every moment between leaving this room and returning to it. I didn’t need to know how he’d done it to know he had. Was it… did he know the sword was haunted? 

I smacked my forehead, frustrated beyond belief by my own stupidity. It wasn’t simple coincidence that we shared a name, surely. I’d been named _for_ him. I must have been! So how had my mother known him? 

I bolted out of the door, determined to find Gideon and demand my sword back, only to run straight into him. He had my sword!

“Your sword,” he said, handing it out to me. I took it, glaring suspiciously at him. He had a good poker face; he showed no signs of discomfort, meeting my eyes easily; languid green not flinching from my own - from _your_ own - pitiless black.

“What did you do with it?”

“Nothing. I found one of the lieutenants with it, in something of a daze. She wasn’t _well,_ but she’s being cared for now, and I apologise that someone so disturbed was able to gain access to your quarters. I’ll speak to John about increasing security.”

And then he left. 

I didn’t believe a word of it; he _had_ done something. I looked over the blade, convinced that it was a fake he’d given me, but the hilt fit my hand as it ever had, and the countless tiny marks on the crossguard, the scabbard, the blade itself, all matched. I knew this sword like the back of my hand - better than I knew the back of my right hand - and there was no way that they could have faked it well enough for me not to notice, it was my sword… but something was missing, and I had a pretty solid idea what that was. I might never have been able to perceive what Abigail had, but I sure as hell noticed its absence.

The sword was empty; my mother’s revenant was gone.

I was furious with myself - I should never have let the sword out of my sight, especially with Gideon being so weird about it the day before. I should have been trying to speak to my mother while I still had the chance, and instead I’d spent a week curled up in bed sulking. The sulking hadn’t brought you back, but it had lost me the chance to finally speak to my mother. 

I was even more furious with Gideon, but where I felt equal to the task of taking down Ianthe if I chose to (I wouldn’t. I was _almost_ certain I wouldn’t, but there was a comfort in knowing that I _could_ ) Gideon was still too much of an unknown. I couldn’t get a good read on him; honestly, from one conversation to the next, he seemed like a completely different person. My initial theory - that his moodiness was related to migraines, or something similar, didn’t square with the fact that it was when he was wearing the sunglasses that he was at his most gregarious. In fact, Gideon-in-sunglasses seemed to be as oddly fixated with me as he was with my sword. Without the sunglasses, he was taciturn, unreadable, and just this side of hostile. He wouldn’t even look at me most of the time, if he could avoid it. 

Although I hadn’t yet been able to make sense of his moods, I could at least predict them to a reasonable extent, based on the presence or absence of those sunglasses. Which, by the way, _were_ mine. First my sunglasses, then my sword. Gideon was definitely weirder around me than he was around Ianthe. This was personal.

And none of that gave me any indication of how much of a threat he might be. He was a Lyctor, but so was I - perhaps I’d have as much of a chance against him as I would against Ianthe. But then, he was unimaginably old; who knew what difference that would make. Still, any revenge I might concoct - and if we’re being honest, Harrow, that sort of thing really isn’t my jam - wouldn’t change the loss that my empty sword represented. What if I could bring my mother back? Even if she’d been exorcised to the River, then surely a Lyctor’s power would be sufficient to call her back?

I wished Abigail were here. Not, like _here,_ because that would mean that Magnus had died, but with me. I missed her. I missed Magnus too, and the Sixth, and Isaac and… Jeannemary. I’d never even had the chance to speak to her. Was she okay? I thought that what I’d done to save her had worked, but I couldn’t be certain. And what of the missing bodies? The explosion… well, I hadn’t seen Palamedes die. Perhaps there was hope. But I’d seen everyone else still living, barring Coronabeth and the Eighth. Where were they all? What had happened? I was regretting more by the second my week of self-indulgence. Of course I’d been hurting, grieving, devastated by your loss - but I had been the Reverend Daughter of Drearburh, even if I never would be again, and if I’d learned anything from that, then surely it was how to keep working through despair.

I had wasted so much time; but I resolved to do better. Belting my sword around my hips - I wasn’t going to leave it unattended again, even if the damage had already been done - I retraced my steps back to the huge cargo hold where the Emperor had taken me. I had remembered that beyond the ranks of bone-and-skin boxes that he’d intended to send to the Ninth there had been a clearing of smaller, more colourful coffins, and it was these I made my way towards now.

These were formed of white stone, not osseous matter, and were so freshly carved that the powder of their planing still clung to the sides. They were all of different shapes: some the six-sided funerary box of the deep burial, some the compact hexagon of the ossuary. All were draped in the spectrum of House colours, lacking only black - no empty coffins for the Ninth - except for one plain casket much further off to the edge of the cargo hold. This one was surrounded by an angry scurrying of Cohort officers; as though someone had kicked their anthill. 

I walked by each of the nearer caskets. The six-sided containers draped with the Second House’s scarlet and white both contained corpses: each a crisp, silent slice of thanergy without even a flicker of bacterial thalergy pattering over their skins. They were statuesque and incorruptible. The Emperor’s doing, maybe. I realised, sadly, that Judith had not lived long enough for help to arrive - or if she had, she had refused it, or it, her. 

The single casket covered in tissue the gorgeous gold of the Third had no one from the Third in residence. Nor could I locate bodies within any of the boxes destined for the Fourth or Fifth Houses. Of the Sixth, one was empty, the other containing pitiable scraps and remains: leavings only, much less than a corpse, but enough to tell me that there was no hope after all, for Palamedes. He had died to save the rest of us from the spirits which had taken over poor Colum’s body. You died to save me. And I hadn’t been able to pull my head out of my ass long enough to even check if he was dead.

For the Seventh: one coffin empty, the other containing, presumably, the recovered body of Protesilaus. The Eighth caskets were both occupied, though one held the same sort of sad remnants that Palamedes’ had.

I took stock. No bodies I had not expected. If those who’d outlived me at Canaan House were dead, they weren’t here. I was too miserable to call it good news, but at least the news had not been worse than expected - I’d had little hope for Palamedes, but it still hurt unimaginably to have my fears for him confirmed.

Tonight I would mourn. Tomorrow - well - it was long past time to put myself in order. I would train with Gideon and Ianthe - it would do little good, but the appearance of compliance would serve my purposes - and I would listen, and I would learn. I’d learn how to bring my mother back, and somehow, someday, I’d learn what had happened to my missing friends.

Too late, I remembered what I’d been doing when I’d been distracted by the loss of my sword. I returned to my room, but the cup had been emptied, cleaned, returned to its place by my sink. Had some unfortunate cohort recruit drawn the short straw and been assigned as housekeeper to the new lyctors, or had Ianthe realised my intentions? There was no way to know.


	68. Eight

Your mother was dead. Had, in fact, been dead long before the mysterious murderers who had spirited you from Canaan House had set foot in the dark halls of the Ninth and left a trail of bodies like breadcrumbs leading to the very heart of Drearburh. Upon further examination, they had made their way straight to the tomb, killing any who crossed their path. They had opened the outer door to the tomb, and they had gone up the passage, venturing through the heavily-warded space as though no more than cobwebs barred their path, only to have been thwarted at the last, unable to roll away the rock before the tomb, even with your blood - the blood of the Tombkeeper line, which must have been why they’d taken you, bled you.

Your House’s solemn charge was intact, though your House was not. Leaderless, rudderless, bereaved and bereft, Aiglamene and Ortus had contrived to conceal the true extent of the damage, to give you all time to plan. 

You did not know how to feel about the loss of your parents. They had been a source of nothing but pain in your life - and not only _your_ life. They had done their utmost to break the spirit of her that you loved above all others, and perhaps the thing you had loved most was how her spirit had bent, but remained unbroken, where the jagged, shattered edges of your own had cut you up inside with each breath, for as long as you could recall. 

And yet, here was your victory - a victory turned to ashes in your mouth, but victory nonetheless - and you were denied, or spared, the chance to present yourself to your parents as having finally made good their bloody bargain, and to a greater extent than they ever could have dared hope for. You were a Lyctor. Even now you should be in your parents’ quarters, using their communicator to contact the King Undying and inform him that you were ready to ascend and sit at His side. The Saints did not govern Houses, they were called to far greater a vocation. And you had sworn that your duty to the Ninth would die. 

Yet here you were, sequestered in the library, and concealed behind robes and hood, paint and veil, against anyone recognising you for who you were. Here you were scouring through books for some hint as to how a corpse may be enticed into animation, as Cytherea the First had done with the poor Seventh House cavalier she had killed. Your House did not need a Saint. Nor did it even need you. It needed stability, surety, the comfort of a familiar hand upon the helm. And so you had arranged with Aiglamene and Ortus that they would cover for your father’s absence as long as they may, saying that he was merely hurt, and would yet recover, to give you time to learn what you must. 

You might have used one of the many other fresh dead for your practices - your House was more than amply supplied with cadavers at present - but instead your first, hesitant attempts at magic to preserve, and then to puppet, the dead were done with only an arm. You worked tirelessly to coax the cells into remembering some semblance of life, and felt the skin warm beneath your hands, until you could close your eyes and pretend that it was living skin you caressed, that the hand whose knuckles you pressed so gently to your lips might move to cup your face in turn. 

And that, of course, was the next step. It was indulgent, perhaps, to learn your skill by creating these pretty fictions, to hold unbearable grief a little at bay with the feel of strong fingers entwined with yours, the beloved warmth and weight of an arm around you while you slept, a gentle hand to brush away your tears. Indulgent, yet effective; within a matter of days you had learned how to bring dead flesh to a perfect mimicry of life. 

If you’d hoped - in the frozen, sealed chamber that was the very heart of your heart, the locked tomb of your affections which had opened too late, when your love was already lost - that enough of her magic would remain in the flesh, you were wrong. The arm was just an arm; it did not spring shoulder and torso, legs and head. She was not returned to you. Skin grew, yes, - a posthumous miracle - but only to cover the awful raw wound where once arm had cleaved to body, leaving this most sacred relic whole and inviolate. 

Still, you had done what you must, and none too soon, because already your father’s body began to decay, despite being kept as cold as could be managed. As you worked over his body, first preserving, and then animating, you recalled the one and only time he had ever touched you - well, the only time that you remembered. Perhaps there had been other times, when you had been an infant, but again, maybe not. Affection had never been your father’s way. You had only one recollection of his having touched you; your parents had pressed a rough rope made of coated fibre into your hands - you remembered the pressure from their palms, their attempts to be gentle. That had been the only time. Even when he beat you, it was only with whip or belt; he would never deign to touch you, even in anger.

Perhaps it was a violation, to touch him as you now must to pin your magics in place. Was it mockery, to transform the untouchable Priamhark into no more than a puppet? Whether it was or not, your House was wounded. Your House had not yet healed from the wound of your existence, and it was too ragged to bear the loss of its only remaining leader. The return of a prodigal daughter would do little to fix that, and may even cause further strife. Would her people now follow the chimera-child who had been the death of the Ninth? 

No. Safer to let them continue to follow Priamhark. Let him guide them through their grieving, and this new appalling loss. Let the transition be managed as gracefully as it may.

You sequestered yourself in the transept, away from curious eyes, as you manipulated your father’s body through the first service held since the tomb had come so close to being breached. Speech was the hardest to mimic; aside from the complexities of diaphragm and larynx, the subtleties of lips and tongue, you had to immerse yourself painfully deep in memory to call up the cadence and timbre of his ministry, and those were not memories you enjoyed reliving. Still, the clack of knucklebones washed over you like a wave, buoying you up and soothing you with their familiarity. 

You got through it. What else could you do?

One service became two, became ten, as the days stacked themselves into weeks. The sudden drop in numbers had been a twisted blessing; with fewer mouths to feed, you and Aiglamene and Ortus had more time to familiarise yourself with books and ledgers, and when supplies grew low enough that it was necessary to order a shuttle with replenishment, you were ready to do so. 

Aiglamene did not question why, when you asked that she teach you the longsword; you suspected her silence was understanding, not indifference. Some days, as you learned to to channel your will into a single blade - almost as long as your body, without the flexibility of your familiar rapier and chain - Aiglamene would speak softly to you, recounting memories of the other one she’d trained, her triumphs and frustrations, and her endless, unceasing care for you. 

Aiglamene was like a messenger through time, taking years of the Reverend Daughter - standing in this very spot, in this very stance, holding a blade identical to the one you now held, and asking after you - and folding those moments into envelopes of words like love letters. You carried your beloved’s death inside you, and she was with you, as she had promised you that she always would be. You told yourself that this was enough, and you did not cry.

You _did not cry._

Ortus asked you about those last months of her life, about her death, and perhaps he meant it as kindness, but you could not talk to him. The Harrow of Canaan House was as dead and buried as your adept, and speaking of that time threatened to bring her to messy undeath; a zombie who would shamble through your life and overturn the numbness which was the closest you came to peace.

Besides, you were more than a little afraid that he would make a ballad of her. You’d always had an uncanny memory for poetry, and could not stand the idea that your memory of her words to you, which had cut like knives in their frank simplicity - 

_Harrow, I’m so fucking sorry_

_I love you. I always will love you._

_One flesh, one end, beloved_

\- would be written over with pithy iamb and florid dactyl. She had spent her life imprisoned in the Ninth, and did not deserve her memory to be trapped in its meter.

As weeks threatened to swell into months, you spoke only to Ortus and Aiglamene; no others on the Ninth knew of your return, and you became accustomed to your hermitage, comfortable in it. Each time the subject came up - how to work towards the day when you would be able to lead the Ninth openly, without your father as proxy and puppet - you pushed it away, saying only _not yet._

But it wasn’t _not yet,_ not really. In your heart, you knew that what you meant was _not ever._ You had been born to this duty, but you hated it. The attempt to breach the Locked Tomb surely vindicated your House’s purpose as the Tomb’s guardians, and yet - what had your people done but die? The ones who had come to open the Tomb had been thwarted not by your House, or your people, or even the wards which had been so meticulously maintained by generations of your line. The Tomb would have remained as solid and impenetrable had the Ninth House never existed. 

Your blood could not open the tomb. Your efforts would not be what kept it closed. Everything you had been born for - the very crime of your existence - was utterly unnecessary, and this burned at you each day, consuming your hours with bitterness. The only thing more painful than waking to the knowledge of your futility each morning, was closing your eyes each night, and knowing that your dreams would taunt you with visions of her, at God’s side, living the life she would have had, if you’d only been stronger, if you’d only saved her, if you hadn’t let her die.

 _You did not cry._ But sometimes you’d wake from dreams of her with wet cheeks, and a throat swollen from sobbing.


	69. Nine

“Our lord the Saint of Duty is gracing Docking Bay Fourteen”

The day had come. Despite the lack of progress on my part or Ianthe’s, the Saint of Duty had insisted that they could delay no longer, and God had regretfully agreed. We were to traverse the River.

Our appearance did not seem to encourage everyone to scurry into the gleaming steel-and-bone culverts of the ship, but rather to take whatever they were doing into double time - this, even though I had been bullied, cajoled, and finally ordered into wearing the ridiculous First House robes, and therefore could easily be identified as the Saint I resentfully was. The Saint of Duty wore the same robes as he always did, robes which were the sister to mine, but had lived a far harder life; they were tattered around the hem, torn in places, and the fabric which sat stiff around my shoulders was soft and well-worn around his.

Whatever they were doing involved, primarily, a shuttle. It was not large. It was of a size, in fact, with the type that had used to bring the Ninth House lightbulb filaments and vitamin supplements, manned by a single pilot who always looked as though he had gained the job by losing a bet. There were boxes being carried up into it. I was still somewhat distracted by the beating hearts and muscles straining all around me, weeping lactic acid as they slid and locked containers and crates into position. At the top of the ramp, sitting on an upturned container in a whisper of opaline skirts and distinct peevishness, was Ianthe; her focus was on the back of the shuttle, not on me. She sat within the sea of heaving stacks and bundles like a pillar.

The bespectacled Saint of Duty gestured for me to sit beside Ianthe: “Get in there and don’t move an inch. Don’t get in anybody’s way. Just go in, and sit, and if there is anything you have been withholding during our training, _anything at all_ , now would be the time to surprise me. I’m afraid the time for indulgence is at an end; the River does not tolerate weakness.”

I was about to make some sort of snarky response when the Saint of Duty surprised me by slipping those sunglasses - my sunglasses - down his nose and staring deeply into my eyes with his own. Eyes that were not the tender green I expected, so at odds with his far-from-tender personality, but were instead a deep brown, with a kind of red spark to them; the brown of fractured rock glass, all mixed in with dark pupil. He took my hands, and I was too surprised by the eyes to resist; he held them tight, and pulled me close, until I could hear his urgent whisper, pitched too quietly for Ianthe to overhear, though she sat mere feet away.

“You have too much strength in you to die, you hear me? I failed you once but I _will not_ fail you now, and I will not let you fail me, or the one who gave her life for you, but the River is something I cannot protect you from. You have to do this yourself. I don’t care what it costs; you need to get through this.”

And then he let go of me, pushed the sunglasses back up to conceal those shocking eyes, and left without another word. 

I had seen Ianthe’s eyes changing, erratically, as she’d attempted to integrate Jeannemary’s spirit with her own. I’d seen how they remained stubbornly pale now, no trace of Coronabeth’s deeper violet peeking through. I’d stared in the mirror and seen your eyes - only ever yours - staring back. I understood the eyes as a sort of metric of Lyctoral cohesion, stability. And so it was shocking to see such drastic change in the Saint of Duty’s eyes.

Part of me wanted to run after him, and point out that it was hypocrisy in the extreme to berate Ianthe and I, day after day, for the instability of our integration (especially when you and I, Harrow, were as integrated as it was possible to be). Instead, I found myself wondering about his cavalier. There had been such unbearable emotion brimming in those unfamiliar eyes, like staring into a collapsing star. I didn’t know if I was terrified or reassured, knowing that it was possible to still grieve so intensely after a myriad without someone. The idea of feeling the way I did forever was a terrible prospect; the only thing more terrible was the thought that it would be possible for me to move on; that some day - years, or centuries, or millennia from now - there might be so much as a single moment where I was not brought low by your absence.

It was harder to hate him, knowing that the Saint of Duty still felt the loss of his cavalier as keenly as I felt your loss. He was right, in a way. I owed you better than to waste the gift you’d given me - even if it was a gift I’d have rather died than receive. Still, on my part at least, he had nothing to worry about. For all that God and the Saint of Duty fussed, I knew that there were no weak spots in our conjoined soul, no fractures or flaws. The River would not sunder us.

Ianthe? Ianthe would make it, or she would not. I am not - and never will be - my sister’s keeper.

I looked around; the inside of the shuttle was as cramped as I’d expected, and as sordidly simple. What I noticed immediately was the source of Ianthe’s fascination and open admiration. Before the back wall of the shuttle, a necromancer of the Cohort squatted; necromantic miasma shone upon her as brightly as a torch. There was no fuel here for her to use to commit necromancy. She was in deep space, and she was not a Lyctor. What she _could_ do was put the final touches on an exquisite nullification ward - wet and red with her own blood, which was being pumped out from a long syringe. It would have been difficult and arduous work even had she had access to her aptitude. The arms of her robes were rolled all the way up to her shoulders so that the cloth would not touch and blur the pattern as she worked; I noticed rucked-up House ribbons in pale seafoam green.

Ianthe made room for me without looking away from the Cohort necromancer, and it irked me that she should feel my presence so easily, though _she_ was as much a void to _me_ as God or Gideon was. I didn't know why I shone so brightly in their perceptions, and I probably never would. I still didn’t know how you’d managed to make me a Lyctor in the first place. 

I didn’t want to touch her, but I refused to perch primly in the small space she’d left me, and so I let my leg and hip press against hers as I sat. That was enough to draw her attention from the Seventh recruit currently painting the shuttle with her own blood. I could not sense her presence necromantically, but I could feel her eying me with interest - an interest I had zero interest in reciprocating, or even acknowledging, so I kept my own attention firmly fixed on the adept before us. Her ward - an expert’s work, and an artist’s, that of genius married to style - was a very familiar one: it was a ghost ward. 

There was an argument happening outside the shuttle, in hushed-but-fervent tones, and I could have listened, if I’d been at all curious, but my concentration was wholly on the ward taking form before me - and on avoiding Ianthe’s predatory gaze - so I let the words slip by me. 

Eventually the Emperor entered the shuttle, followed by the Saint of Duty. Gideon’s face was bare; I didn’t know where the sunglasses had gone. His eyes were green again, and his face blank. He didn’t even spare me a glance, so I ignored him right back, focusing on the Cohort adept and the ward she was working on.

As God passed in front of me I could see that he looked as though he had prepared in a hurry; he carried a small bag, hastily packed, slung over his shoulder - the ever-present tablet peeked out of his pocket, along with what seemed to be at least five styluses - and he was dressed simply, as per usual, in a black shirt and trousers - only his First House robe distinguished him from a humble penitent to the Ninth.

He wore the crown of office that I’d only seen him wear a couple of times before, in passing: a wreath of ribbon and pearlescent leaves in his dark hair, rustling prismatically in the windless docking bay. Each leaf was intertwined with a match-sized infant fingerbone. He surveyed the shuttle’s preparations briefly, and then turned to Ianthe and I: “Are you all right, girls?”

I ignored him, keeping my attention on the ward. The Seventh adept had just completed it, and was now attempting to die quietly on the floor. There was a whorl of blood down her front from the syringe that she’d levered deep into her subclavian artery, for the finishing touches on the perfect nightmare spiral. Impressively, the ward betrayed no trembling from myocardial trauma, and she’d sprayed fixative across it before collapsing, silently. 

Now she lay with her eyes rigid on the ceiling, hands clasped over the growing stain on the front of her robes, which were turning Second House scarlet with blood.

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” I muttered, and gladly took this opportunity to escape Ianthe. I kneeled and pressed my hands to the wet, blood-sticky chest of the Seventh House adept with the Seventh House death wish - this was far more what I’d grown up expecting the Seventh to be like, but having met their indefatigable Duchess, I had no patience for this nonsense. 

Quickly, I sealed over her wounds, and - remembering what I had done with Jeannemary, and having a Lyctor’s power to throw at the problem now, I plucked a vein from my wrist and stretched it until it wormed from my body and fixed onto hers like a leech, and I poured my own blood into her. I didn’t even have to concentrate on replenishing it; my Lyctor’s body did so automatically, without the faintest effort on my part. When I judged that she would live, I spooled my wayward vein back into myself and reconnected it along its original path. 

I could have spiked her heart with thalergy, to get it beating again, but I was beyond frustrated with the extreme zealotry of every stupid Cohort officer on this whole ship, and so I started it manually with a carefully precise blow to her chest. She coughed, and clutched at her bloodied robes. Her expression changed from glassy-eyed expectation to resentment; she rolled over to kiss the dusty floor of the shuttle before the Emperor’s feet, ignoring me entirely.

“Most Holy Lord,” she said, but there was half a question in it.

“Not today, First Lieutenant,” said God. “We need necromancers like you now more than ever.”

She kissed her fingers at him, a little mechanically - and then to the Saint of Duty, and then to Ianthe, and then, after a pause which I chose to read as passive-aggressive, to me - and then she curtseyed to the point where she nearly folded herself right in half. She rose and escaped down the ramp, booted footfalls heavy and loud in the sudden quiet, the only sign she had been there the enormous whorl of the ward, and the blood on my robes. With a swipe of my hand, I skeletonised it until my robes were once again untarnished.

The loading of the shuttle appeared to be done, with boxes stacked almost everywhere, and a great stone coffin taking up almost all of the cramped space. It didn’t take much deduction to conclude that the perfectly-preserved body in the coffin was Cytherea. 

The shuttle appeared to be fully loaded so rather than returning to the overturned crate where I’d been before, I dropped into a pull-down seat as far from Ianthe as could be managed and clicked the safety belt together as I watched God fuss. Finally, when he had tested the metal hasps and cinches on the boxes at least a dozen times, he brushed his hand very lightly over the secured stone of Cytherea’s coffin, the very briefest of touches, before stopping in front of the ward that had been applied to the wall. He pressed the tip of his little finger to one of the whorls, very gently, as though afraid to hurt it. The foetal fingerbones and leaves crowning his hair kept swaying in some nonexistent breeze. 

“Brilliantly executed… nearly perfect levels of carbon dioxide in the fixative,” he said, taking a stylus from his pocket. “I’m telling Sarpedon to give her a commendation,” he said, tapping at his tablet. “That will have to do. It’s not exactly an appropriate thank-you for nearly bleeding out. Excellent work there Gideon - ah - Gideon the Younger.” God clapped me on the shoulder, turning slightly to address me and Ianthe both. “With Mercy and Augustine unaccounted for, I shall have to rely on you girls sooner and more heavily than I’d hoped to.”

He pressed a button next to the door and the ramp sucked up into the shuttle with a great mechanical _slarp._ Then he turned to Gideon (the Elder) and said: “You will not reconsider? You’ve all but forced my hand, Gideon, and you know I trust your judgment implicitly, but…”

“You are nearly in Dominicus’s halo, John.”

“No, you’re right. I know you are, but…” again he turned those awful oil-slick eyes on me, and on Ianthe who had leapt up when the shuttle door closed, and settled in to the seat next to mine. “The Mithraeum is a destination we can reach by only one means,” said God, with the air of a man pulling a final brick out of a wobbling tower. “I cannot yet in good conscience take either of you on this journey, but there is no other way,” he sighed, looking back to Gideon. “Prepare to launch. I’ll make the call.”

The Saint of Duty settled into the pilot’s seat in the tiny cockpit and started flicking switches. The switches made nice haptic clanks within their plex housings, and more lights came on overhead, bathing us all in an unpleasantly orange glow.

The communicator at the pilot’s chair crackled. A voice said clearly, “My lord, you’re cleared to leave. We await your word.”

Though there was no change in God’s pitch or cadence, his voice had taken on a different cast. It was as though a steel tool had been taken from its housing. Seeing him this way, though I still hated him, I could almost respect him. He said: “Loose the clamps.”

“The clamps are set for release,” said the officer over the communicator. Then he cleared his throat and began what I was coming to think of as the common prayer, though it had been wholly uncommon on the Ninth: _Let the King Undying, ransomer of death, scourge of death, vindicator of death, look upon the Nine Houses and hear their thanks-”_ and, over the crackling line joined in the tinny voices of the entire docking crew: “ _Let the whole of everywhere entrust themselves to him…”_

I peered over my shoulder at the porthole. The dimmed interior of Docking Bay Fourteen was lightening: they were opening up some outer airlock, and the shuttle itself was travelling on rails as though to be offered to space like a sacrifice. The velvety blackness of the outside world became naked; cold stars burnt in the distance. 

Ianthe kept her eyes downcast, modest and pliant, as though this sickening and poorly acted role would convince anyone with a brain. She sat with her rapier belted at her hip beneath her robe, raising bumps beneath the mother-of-pearl cloth, and when she finally managed to catch my gaze, beneath those pallid lashes I could see the hot anticipation in her eyes of someone about to be announced for an award. She was deeply excited. That starry, far-off gaze refocused on me, and she whispered coyly: “Should we hold hands, in girlish solidarity?”

At my expression, she puffed away a strand of colourless hair and remarked, “ _You’re_ the one who investigated my tonsils.”

“Next time I’ll rip them out,” I said, and was about to elaborate on my threat, when the Saint of Duty said, “Releasing in thirty,” and the Emperor, “Don’t triangulate. We don’t want to put them in danger. We’ll hold course until the _Erebos_ is out of our radius.”

The Emperor stood behind the pilot’s chair, one hand on the Saint of Duty’s shoulder. He leaned over to press down on the comm button. The prayer stopped as though everyone praying had lost the air from their lungs.

“Our enemies have once more raised their hands to those who would be at peace with them,” he said. “Again, we are a violated covenant, and again we are struck at with anger, and with fear, by those who cannot reason and those who cannot forgive what we are. You who have served on the _Erebos_ \- my soldiers and necromancers of the Nine Houses - if you find yourselves on the battlefield, remember that I will make even the dying echo of your heartbeat a sword. I will make the stilled sound on your tongue a roar. I will recall you when you are a ghost in the water, and by that recollection you will be divine. On your death, I will make the very blood in your body arrows and spears.

“Remember that I am the King Undying.”

He lifted his hand off the communicator button, cutting short the primal, triumphant howl that had echoes from the docking crew. We dropped through space. The shuttle might have been empty for all that I could sense within, except for that single foetal bundle of thanergy lying still inside the coffin. 

God said, “Children, attend. It’s time for me to teach you what I can, before we descend.”


	70. Ten

The lesson - such as it had been - was complete. I was lying on the floor of the shuttle, listening to my breathing as it slowed, and trying not to think of man-eating magma fish, or the thing Colum had become; an empty vessel filled with malign spirits. How much more terrible would an empty Lyctor’s body be? The Saint of Duty’s threat to kill Ianthe or I, should our spirits become unmoored from our bodies, felt less like a threat, and more like a comforting promise. Whatever happened to my spirit, my body - the body you had held, and kissed, and loved - would remain inviolate.

“When do we start?” Ianthe’s voice was clinical, like she was waiting for a tooth extraction.

“I began submerging thirty seconds ago,” God said. “Timer?”

“Set at five minutes,” replied the Saint of Duty.

“We need a slower pace. Set it to six.”

There was a displeased grunt from the cockpit, but Gideon the Elder did not argue. 

In the depths of space, now the depths of the River, the shuttle was a false gravity cocoon. I did not know which way was up, or down, or in what direction we were going. I was lying on the floor, trying to stop my lungs from expanding too quickly; some of the exercises Aiglamene had given me over the years involved a measure of breath control, but it was foreign to me, to be focusing so hard on my breathing when lying down, not standing in the training room, sword in hand. It was making me feel blurred out; not at peace, but rather numb, and empty. 

I stared at the ceiling for a while, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. I tilted my head and found Ianthe looking _through_ me. She was lying bracketed between her rapier and her offhand, and we were close enough for discomfort. 

“Hoods over your heads,” God said. “They’re translucent for a reason. It’s easier when you can perceive light, but not get distracted.”

I did this, and my vision softened into a jumble of lights, like looking into a headache, or white noise. There were no shapes or shadows. Ianthe faded into a mother-of-pearl lump beside me. For the first time I started to understand why we had been given these pastel candy-floss confections to wear.

My breath sounded a harsh, unlovely peal. Ianthe’s sounded like a bellows. The shuttle’s habitation controls had either been turned off or set low, even by Ninth House standards: beneath the robe, and my shirt and trousers, my skin was pimpled with cold. Well. _My_ skin was. I didn’t look to see whether _the arm_ was responding the same way, all those alien little blonde hairs standing on end. Beyond the constant fizzing, burning itch where foreign flesh met my own, I didn’t feel much sensation from the arm these days. 

I felt like a dead weight in that heavy chill, each breath a ponderous inflation of the lungs, in and out, in and out. I was aware of myself, of the energy within me - thanergy and thalergy spun together into the quiet, scintillating wellspring which was all I had left of you. I fell into a numb, half-alive, half-dead reverie, my anxiety stifled and calcified, until I heard Ianthe cry out.

I stared through the minute slit where my hood brushed my cheeks. I made no sound, because I was not sure I was seeing what Ianthe was seeing: for my part, I saw the water.

It came bubbling up through the bolted seams in the floor panels, a filthy, rusty red, with a bloom like sewage upon it. It had already boiled up to the front of the shuttle, and was to the top of what I could see of the Emperor’s shoes. It seemed unsure of gravity, running this way and that; then it started coming in high-pressure spurts through the sides of the cockpit’s front window.

“Thirty seconds,” said the Saint of Duty, whose voice - never especially animated - had become so flatly clinical that it made his prior utterances seem as frivolous and overwrought as Ortus declaiming from _The Noniad_. “Five minutes thirty remaining.”

There was a rustling from right next to me, which distracted me from my dread as I watched the waters of the River creeping closer and closer. The Emperor said, “Keep flat.”

Ianthe said urgently, “Lord, I can see them.”

 _Them?_ But the Emperor said, “Focus on them. Don’t be afraid. Take off your hood if you want to. But think about the details of the shuttle too… where you were, where I am, where Gideon is - where both Gideons are. The details of the shuttle are a projected memory and they are not all real, but they will dissolve further as you leave your body behind, and I don’t want to lose you.”

Gideon said, “Four minutes, thirty seconds remaining. Ward has an estimated half a minute left.”

I was too curious to resist. I wrenched the opaline hood from my face, and was startled all the way to our souls. Turbid, filmy water was filling up the shuttle at a rate of knots. The floor had gone entirely, without my noticing, and I was appalled by its wet and corporeal reality: the water had reached me, and I was soaked through almost to the ribs by tepid, greasy waves. 

Ianthe had sat up - she never could follow instructions - but she was staring, glassy-eyed, at some point I could not see, rigid and uncomprehending. I could not spare a thought for what Ianthe might be seeing, because the waters were still rising. It seeped around my neck and started trickling into my ear canals, and I could not bear it. I tried to fill my mind with thoughts of you, but the associations were too new - the water had been a horror to me for too much of my life, and it was those older, colder waters which I felt around me now.

The water reached my face, and I reflexively held my breath. 

“Let that go, Gideon,” said God, tapping on the tablet with his stylus, apparently unconcerned by the waters swirling around his calves. “You don’t need to breathe.”

I forced myself to exhale, trickling it out of my nose and mouth, but when I inhaled, automatically, and took a shy lungful of warm, muddy water, I panicked. God was saying, quite encouragingly: “You’re fine, Gideon. You’re doing very well,” which told me that I was not, in fact, doing well at all. But I already knew that. I had forced myself to expel the water I’d breathed slowly, with some semblance of calm, and it took every ounce of self-control I had ever learned to continue my slow, shallow breaths without screaming and thrashing like a drowning man. 

“The ward has lasted for one minute, forty seconds,” said Gideon. “One minute forty-one.”

God said, “ _Two_ commendations for the lieutenant.”

Gideon called out, “one minute forty-four… One minute forty-five,” and in the space between _forty-four_ and _forty-five,_ the ward exploded. The dried blood came off the wall in flakes of brown confetti. It left behind a burnt, warped indentation as it slithered away to dissolve in the rising current. Next to me, Ianthe arched her spine so acutely that she folded up in the middle, as though she had been electrocuted. The light from the panels limned her in amber; her hood had come loose and her long pale hair floated about her shoulders like a caul. 

Something slapped two wet and rotting hands on the plex. 

“Three minutes remaining.” Said Gideon

“I hate this part,” said God.

A nude, fish-eaten body thudded down hard atop the plex, leaving a momentary bloom of blood before it bounced off again. Another hit a few seconds later, but this one stayed put; it was a torso with the legs gone and the face eaten away, leaving the shiny skull to bang against the surface. It pressed one hand down, as though beseeching, but was sucked away again into the deep water outside the shuttle. The water inside now sloshed up to the Emperor’s shoulders, washing over Gideon’s hands. He did not bother to take his fingers away from the controls. 

The water around me was thick with the flotsam and jetsam of bits of corpse. Then something bumped my foot, and I glanced down to see Priamhark and Pelleamena crowding around me. They put their hands on my head, pushed me down, and the waters were no longer warm and bloody, but cold and laced with salt. They were drowning me. 

I grasped a fine fleck of bone from my tibia, tried to work it through my skin to wrap around me, forming a shield to protect me from the Reverend Mother and Father. It didn’t precisely succeed. Instead of a fine sheath of matter, I pulled a wet plug from just above the epiphyseal line, and my shinbone opened like a flower; my blood and cellular matter opened up on my rainbow robe and floated outwards, and God turned around. His face was indistinct in the murk, but his voice was not - 

“Oh-” He used a word I hadn’t heard before. “Gideon, no theorems!”

Gideon swore. “She’s using _theorems?”_

The pain did not matter. The shuttle had shivered, somehow, around me: synaptogenesis had erupted in my brain, and my eyes were opening. I was lying in a sea of bodies; not just Pelleamena and Priamhark, but Crux, Sister Loryngha, Deurina, Brother Staustas from the Drearburh kitchens, and more. Beneath them, the faces of every wizened Ninth body I had ever watched breathe its last; and further down…

There were so many children.

I stood up without thinking, trying to get away, but there was nowhere to go. They carpeted the bottom of the shuttle, bobbing in an unseen current low to the ground, lacking the air to drift to the top. Through a thin curtain of my blood I could see the dizzying array of slippery corpses, their faces painted in black and alabaster greys. Dead girls in their teens, their half-exposed bones still caught in the act of fusing at the caps; dead boys still shedding their milk teeth; ungendered infants, mostly skull, their nails like tiny chips of stone. There was a whining in my head; a buzzing; almost a keening. Slowly, I realised the noise wasn’t in my head, but coming from me. It would have been a scream, if my teeth had not been clenched so tight I expected them to shatter.

The Emperor was wading towards me through this bobbing array of dead. He was saying something I paid no particular attention to: “Gideon, it’s not real. Only you can see what you’re seeing, and everything inside the shuttle is illusion. It’s the River. The River is a predator - the dead are in your brain. It’s trying harder with you because you’re fundamentally deeper in it than Ianthe. I didn’t think you’d be able to go this deep, first time in, but you have. Walk back toward me.”

“Two minutes remaining,” said Gideon. And: “They are coming for the source of the noise.”

I pressed my hands to my face, and was startled all over again that I could not close my eyes. When I pressed the lids down, the light changed and I lost visual complexity. The shuttle was gone, but the water was not, and the bodies were everywhere. I was lost in a deep aperture. Hot bloody blisters bubbled up from my skin, and I was aware of the structures of myself, one sickly radiance orbiting another like a binary star. My eyes opened. I looked at the blanketing bodies of the dead of the Ninth House, and I was aware of our souls as an ova cluster of two hundred and one pinpricks of light. We were a sigil, an intermingled fire. I searched the faces around me, all of my dead, but you weren't there. I was alone.

The fluid was sucked from my sinus cavities, and with it, my brain, soon disassembled. I was made small. I was a throat, I was an oven. The water around me was icy with salt, stinging and burning in the wound you'd made of me. The water around me was boiling hot, and my skin was sloughing off me in reddened, shrinking frills and you did not come to save me. My longing for you was physical, _unbearable_. I was a hunger without a stomach, and I was searching for you. _Surely_ here, in the River, what remained of you would manifest, and find me? Here, among the dead, couldn't we be together?

God kept beckoning to me, trying to return me to the shuttle full of the dead, but I was dying myself, in that hot water. I could see my live blood, rising up in bright red plumes before me, leaving streaks of red on my robe.

"Thirty seconds," said the Saint of Duty, and quietly: "Lord, you doom your Houses."

"Gideon," said God. "Over here - over here, kid. I daren't touch you."

I didn't want him to touch me. I couldn't bear for him to touch me. I pictured his hands joining Pelleamena's and Priamhark's, choking me, pushing me under. I turned from him, and almost collided with a face I knew only from a photograph, though I was far more familiar with the bones beneath the skin.

“Bob?” I tried to say, but I still could not get my jaw to unclench enough for speech. He held out a hand to me, and then there with him were Alexis, Tyler, Giorgi, all the others. All the skeletons from Canaan House. They shepherded me back to the shuttle, until I was once again in that cramped space, dominated by the coffin at its centre. They surrounded me, pressing close until I could feel only the coolness of their dead flesh; until I heard only a faint, soothing croon, as though they sang to an infant in a cradle; until I could see nothing at all.

A universe away, you woke suddenly in the middle of the night. You were sodden, drenched in a fluid which might have been sweat, but smelled so much darker and so much bloodier. You gasped and choked, half convinced you were drowning, all alone in the dark.


	71. Parodos

𝕋𝔼ℕ 𝕄𝕆ℕ𝕋ℍ𝕊 𝔹𝔼𝔽𝕆ℝ𝔼 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔼𝕄ℙ𝔼ℝ𝕆ℝ'𝕊 𝕄𝕌ℝ𝔻𝔼ℝ

Gideon the First, Saint of Duty, was going home. He had not returned to Canaan House for the better part of a myriad. He had not intended to return now, but his elder brother and sister were missing and someone had to respond to the distress call from the First. He was the only one left.

Gideon’s hands were firm and sure on the controls. His mind was unclouded, his memory unfogged. It had been nearly twenty years since his last blackout, and he was confident that his infirmity was long behind him. That had been a strange time, for more than just him, but it was over now.

He set the shuttle down on the familiar landing pad, noticing the changes. Some were expected; the general wear and tear of age. Others were not. A large portion of the west wing had collapsed, as if from an explosion.

Methodically he started working his way through the building. He found bodies, and brought most of them back to his shuttle. Cassiopeia’s pets he left behind. John had never cared for her experiments, and Gideon did not believe he’d regard the First House priests as human enough to warrant a funeral. 

This was not something Gideon was required to have an opinion on, so he didn’t think about it. He merely stepped over the bodies, and put them from his mind. As he made his way through the vestibule towards the training room, he permitted himself a small indulgence. He returned to their room, his and Pyrrha’s, and found it almost untouched, by time or outside hand. 

Gideon climbed the wooden stairs and lay down in the bed which had been his cavalier’s. The linens still smelled of her; steel, and gunpowder, and musk. He closed his eyes and let himself imagine that she was there, lying in the bed across from him. How she’d laugh at his sentimentality. He pulled himself together and stood. Before he left, he couldn’t resist pulling one of her cigarette butts from the ashtray where it had lain, undisturbed, for almost a myriad. He held it between his fingers, knuckles fitting into the indentations left by hers, and then he slipped it into his pocket.

He found Cytherea’s body, and another beside it. She looked peaceful. Had he ever seen her look so peaceful in life? She wasn’t in pain any more, so he did not grieve. He merely carried her back to the shuttle with the rest. 

He recovered what remains he could from the site of the explosion, scraping them ignominiously into drawers pulled from a half-destroyed dresser. As he made his search he could feel living bodies, at least six of them, on the edges of his perceptions. Not dead, and not lyctors. They would need to be dealt with per John’s orders. 

He found a dead priest of the Eighth House who looked to be barely more than a child, and sighed. He wished that John had listened to Mercymorn and instituted an age requirement. He hoped none of the living were this young. Gideon did not relish killing children, though he would do what he must to protect the Emperor. He had sworn that to Pyrrha; an oath he had broken only once, and would not break again, no matter the personal cost.

Then he saw the other body in the room…

And Gideon wasn’t there anymore.

***

Pyrrha Dve opened eyes which were not hers, blinking. After the last time, she’d buried herself deep that she was barely even there any more, not even feeling the odd snatches of shared experience that she had since they’d first compartmentalised, all those millennia ago. She’d left consciousness in the darkness of that distant House, along with love and hope, dreams and plans, and… her sunglasses.

So why was she staring at those same sunglasses now, lying blood-splattered on the floor of a room in Canaan House? Not even their room, but - if she wasn’t mistaken - Cyrus and Valancy’s. The sunglasses lay next to a dismembered body in the black-on-black robes of a Ninth House adept, which Pyrrha supposed at least halfway explained the mystery of the sunglasses. It didn’t explain the much larger mystery, of why she was here, driving Gideon’s body as she’d sworn she never would again. 

Then she got a closer look at the body, and fell to her - to Gideon’s - knees.

Those bastard treacherous cultists had lied. Her Wake was dead - she’d seen the body - but Pyrrha hadn’t thought to ask to see the infant. Their child, their daughter, had lived, and Pyrrha had abandoned her. And now the child was dead, looking so much like her mother that Pyrrha thought that she might die as well from a grief large enough to crush even Gideon’s strong heart. The child was dead and Pyrrha had missed her whole life. Pyrrha couldn’t comprehend the cruelty of it, that something had caused her to surface, only to suffer this way, and she prepared to dive again - down to the dark place, like the very bottom of the River, where she was crushed small and the pressure was too great to permit thought, or memory, or grief. 

Then she saw the black-shrouded chest move. The faintest motion, an almost imperceptibly shallow breath, but it was there. Her daughter was alive.

Pyrrha picked up her sunglasses, cleaning them on the hem of Gideon’s shirt, and put them on. Then she scooped her child gently into her arms, cradling her as though she were an infant still, and carried her from that room of death, and out into the sunlight. 

She didn’t hear the footsteps following her out; she only had ears for the tiny sound of her daughter’s breathing; still shallow but even, clear, steady. The sound that finally got through to her, when she’d gotten almost to the ramp of the shuttle, was a small female voice.

“Where are you taking her?”

Pyrrha whirled, holding the body in her arms protectively, possessively close. Behind her were four people; two adults, two children. From the body language, she’d have called them family, but two wore the brown robes of the Fifth, and the other two, Fourth navy. Pyrrha cast back through Gideon’s memory, trying to recall why they were here, and whether Gideon knew these people.

Ah, no. He’d been sent to retrieve those who had ascended, and kill the rest. 

“Are you lyctors?” she asked, already knowing the answer from the rapiers carried by two of the four.

“No,” the younger girl said.

“Then it’s no business of yours.” Pyrrha replied.

“Yes it is; Gideon’s my friend.”

Another, more frantic rummage through Gideon’s mind, but no, Pyrrha was sure he had not met this child. 

“Gideon… you mean my daughter?” Pyrrha nodded down at the body in her arms. “Her name is Gideon?” _And Wake always said I was the sentimental one,_ Pyrrha thought.

Belatedly, she cursed herself for speaking so openly in front of these strangers, but surely if there were anyone she could speak freely to, it was those whose life expectancy could - regrettably - be measured in minutes.

Frowns crossed the faces of the older pair, like storm clouds across the sea. The woman asked: “You’re her father?”

“Mother,” Pyrrha corrected, and the word tasted strange on her tongue. _Mother._

“Then where the hell have you been?” the woman snapped, with an admirable lack of self-preservation. Perhaps this Fifth House matriarch had already seen the way the winds were blowing, and imminent death had made her careless. Or perhaps she simply cared too much.

The man who Pyrrha presumed to be her cavalier was more diplomatic: “What my wife means to say is” - _not her cavalier then?_ Pyrrha looked again at the rapier. Definitely the Fifth cav. _Well, that was Augustine’s House for you_ \- “Gideon’s had a rough time of it. She could have done with a mother to look out for her.”

“I didn’t know,” Pyrrha said, voice thick with regret. “They told me she died in infancy, alongside her other mother.”

The woman from the Fifth stared a moment longer, seeming to search Pyrrha’s - Gideon’s - face for any trace of deceit, but finding her sorrow genuine, and bitter, she relaxed.

“You’ll look after her now?”

Pyrrha nodded. “I’ll protect her with my life.”

“She’s strong,” the woman continued with pride, and a touch of reproach. “She doesn’t need protection…”

Her husband coughed, pointedly.

“Well, not _much_ protection. She gets herself into scrapes, but she damn well gets herself back out of them too. What she needs is love.”

Pyrrha allowed her sunglasses to slide down her nose, and met the woman’s eyes. They exchanged a long look.

“Abigail Pent,” the woman introduced herself. She stepped forward, holding out a hand. Pyrrha shook it, the gesture made awkward by the body in her arms. “Wait here. There’s something you should have.”

She returned a few minutes later with a sword. A plain two-hander, standard infantry issue. Abigail laid it atop the body in Pyrrha’s arms; Pyrrha’s daughter didn’t wake, but she did curl her left arm around the scabbard, holding it in place. Wake’s daughter, for sure, and Pyrrha’s, if she was clutching her sword like a favourite childhood blanket. Pyrrha wished the commander had lived to see what their child had become; Pyrrha hadn’t even met her yet, not really, and already she was consumed with an indescribable love, an unbearable pride. 

Then the child gripped the sword tighter, and it shifted, until the crossguard nudged against the bare skin of Pyrrha’s neck, and Pyrrha gasped. 

She would know her love in the blindness of her eyes… in the deafness of her ears… as a shadow smudged against the wall, annihilated by light. Recognising her spirit within the sword was as easy as breathing. 

Pyrrha realised she was about to betray Gideon again, and truly regretted it, but she could not kill this Abigail, nor her husband, or the children in their care. 

“Thank you,” she said, and the words were so feeble, but they were all she had to give. That, and life. “Are there any others here who have ascended?”

“One.” This _one_ was contentious, judging by the purse of Abigail’s lips, the hurried shushing her husband gave to the Fourth teens. “I thought there was another but…” Abigail sighed. “I guess I was wrong. She was killed.”

“Bring the other one to me,” Pyrrha said. She met Abigail’s eyes, and dropped her voice to a whisper that only the other woman would hear. “You know why I’m here?”

“I can guess,” Abigail replied, in the same hushed tone. “I’m afraid I won’t let you hurt the children.”

“You know what I am” - she most certainly did not - “you think you have a chance of stopping me?”

“Probably not, but I’ll try anyway.”

Pyrrha took a deep breath.

“I’m not going to kill you. I should… but for my daughter’s sake, I won’t. I can see you’ve been a mother to her, when I wasn’t, so I owe you that much. I can’t let you leave, though. You have shelter here, and supplies. That’s the best I can do. I’m sorry.”


	72. Eleven

𝕊𝕀𝕏 𝕄𝕆ℕ𝕋ℍ𝕊 𝔹𝔼𝔽𝕆ℝ𝔼 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔼𝕄ℙ𝔼ℝ𝕆ℝ'𝕊 𝕄𝕌ℝ𝔻𝔼ℝ

The Mithraeum, the Seat of the First Reborn! The Sanctuary of the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the bolthole of God - the removing place of hallowed bones, and the ossuary of the steadfast! A space station hidden forty billion light-years from the ever-burning light of Dominicus, lit by thanergetic starlight, set in the midst of the circumstellar disc, an ancient jewel within so much dead gravel.

My new homestead was perched in the middle of an asteroid field, made up of concentric rings, like a jeweller’s toy. It consisted of habitation quarters - a doughnut ring of them on the outer edge - an inner ring of preparation rooms, a couple of laboratories, a reading room that was bigger than Drearburh, and a storage lazaret where the foodstuffs were held frozen in time, unperishable. God, no, _Teacher_ \- for he insisted on being called Teacher, as though I was not still grieving for the kind, animated Teacher I had known at Canaan House - said that there was a strange after-taste to thousand-year-old food kept necromantically pure, but I couldn’t taste it. Or perhaps it was just that the majority of these foods were so unfamiliar to me that I had no idea what they were supposed to taste like in the first place. 

There was also a water-replenishment plant and incidental rooms. The chapel, and God’s rooms, were at the centre. Everything else was for the dead. Arrayed were the bones of the dead and the bodies of the dead and the mummified heads of the dead, and the retrieved flesh-and-skeleton arms of the dead, preserved immediately after they had been blown off the bodies of the previously living, and the ashes of the dead and the hair of the dead and the fingernails of the dead, and the folded skins of the dead and the eyes of the dead, jarred in long and exquisite crystal containers filled with aldehydes. A Lyctor sitting on the outside of the rocky ring that haloed the Mithraeum would not think it hidden: they would see it as a screaming beacon of thanergy - a burning gyre of death - letters writ large in space, HERE IS THE GRAVEYARD AND WE ARE THE GRAVES. 

It was distracting. Drearburh had been full of the dead, sure, but skeletons only, aged and tame, thanergy muted by years, decades, even centuries - in the case of some particularly robust constructs - of animation. The thanergy in Drearburh had been like a whispering in the next room. Here, it screamed. 

My next few months of Lyctorhood passed in an echoing, vaulted set of sterile rooms specially allotted to me. They were neutrally coloured in boring whites and greys and blacks, scrupulously clean, and relatively empty of bones. Unlike Ianthe’s, they had never been used. They had been intended for a Lyctor who had never slept between their sheets, or hung their clothes in the closets, or bathed their face in the water pump sink.

You’d think that, having grown up breathing the aged dust of Ninth devotees past, wearing their clothes and using their things, that to get an unused set of rooms would be new and enticing. In some ways it was. In others, it was a problem. 

There were no servants here, in the bolthole of the Necrolord Prime. Not a construct in sight. We all cooked our own food, and cleaned up afterwards. We did our own laundry. I did a lot of laundry, having in my possession exactly two changes of clothes. When the Saint of Duty had brought us from Canaan House, he hadn’t bothered to stop long enough to pick up our things. 

Ianthe was better off than me. She’d been installed in the rooms which had been occupied by Cyrus the First, before he’d died. Cyrus had not dealt well with his grief - not that either Ianthe or I were ones to talk about this - and so Ianthe slept beneath exquisite oil paintings of Cyrus and his cavalier, and she wore Valancy’s perfume, and had access to whole wardrobes of clothes with _Valancy_ carefully embroidered on the inside seams. The clothes were all beautifully cut for someone of a different height and body type than Ianthe’s. They were tight where they should have been loose, and loose where they should have been tight. Valancy Trinit had been possessed of a body which did not quit. Ianthe, in comparison, looked like she’d been through the wash a few too many times, and had been too-vigorously wrung out to dry.

Unless I wanted to go scavenging through dead Lyctors’ rooms, I was stuck with what I had, and what I had meant doing laundry every single night. Worse, the clothes I had weren’t fitting as well as they used to. My body was changing. Part of that was the opportunity to train as much as I wanted to; I had very little else to do. The arm still wasn’t right, but I was learning to work around it. The larger problem came with my access to almost unlimited amounts of food; where I’d once been almost as lean as the other Gideon, each muscle and tendon standing out in perfect definition, adequate nutrition had now sheathed me in softness, smoothing out my hard edges. 

I loved the new, gentle lushness of my body, but lived in absolute terror of the day when I would no longer be able to pull the waistband of my trousers on over my hips, or button my shirt over my chest. Ianthe observed these changes with an avidness which disgusted me. She’d offered her services as a seamstress, claiming some facility with needle and thread, but even if I hadn’t already accumulated more than enough needle-and-thread related trauma in my life, there was no way I was letting Ianthe put her hands on me. She might not remember that horrid little postscript she’d written, but I did. _‘If you feel like getting bloody with me again sometime, you know where to find me xoxoxoxoxo’_ haunted me.

Everyone here was a fucking crank. I include myself in that, Harrow, because I was still dreaming about you, dreams so simultaneously detailed and dull that I started to worry for the state of my mind. I dreamed of you pouring over Drearburh’s ledgers, filling out requisition forms and studying shuttle schedules, even of you training with Aiglamene, but using a two-hander, as though my brain were too overwhelmed to produce real dreams, and instead simply skinned over my most boring memories with a layer of you. So yes, _everyone_ here was insane.

Teacher, for instance, had a trick of asking me to come over and talk, and then never actually talking, but sitting with me watching the asteroids outside the window. Today I’d found him with a sheaf of flimsy spread out over the low table - months-old reports - and he was _embarrassed_. God was embarrassed. “I still think about it,” he confessed. “The eighteen thousand… the radiation missiles… Augustine and Mercymorn must have been with them; there’s no other explanation for their absence. A year ago, I had four lyctors. I set out to increase our numbers, and now I have three,” he sighed.

I sat in my ridiculous iridescent robe, stirring an extra spoonful of sugar into my tea, and wondering if I could get away with taking another biscuit. 

I know, Harrow, _I know_. I hated God, and here I was taking tea with him. You have to understand how unutterably bored I was, and how lonely. At least on Drearburh I’d had Ortus to talk to. Where conversation was concerned, Ianthe was a poor substitute. She didn’t like me any more than I liked her, but she was at least as bored and lonely as I was - probably more so, having grown up on voluble, prattling Ida with a twin forever by her side - so she had this annoying habit of hovering around me. Well, I would have called it ‘hovering’ in anyone else. Ianthe didn’t hover; she draped herself languorously over any furniture she could find in my general vicinity and waited for me to acknowledge her. When I failed to do so - as I invariably did - she would huff a sigh which would have been distracting, coming from Coronabeth, but which Ianthe lacked the shoulders, bosom, or wardrobe to really pull off, and find something else to pose on. My only respite was when she'd fall asleep sprawled over a chaise, or tucked into an armchair, which she did with surprising regularity, though I never trusted that she wasn't feigning sleep, hoping I'd let my guard down.

The Saint of Duty oscillated wildly between almost manic gregariousness and silently seething distaste. Gideon (prime) was a riddle too boring to solve, and too dangerous to ignore. Mostly I avoided him. I knew a confrontation was coming, from how frequently he would stalk up to me, hand on the pommel of his rapier and death in his eyes, but each time he would swerve away at the last minute. 

At least I had worked out why he so often seemed to hate me. I’d walked past the chapel one day, and found the autodoor to Cytherea’s tomb was shut. It was never shut, and so, curious, I had opened it, and been confronted by the Saint of Duty, his back bare to me, in a pair of soft flannel sleeping trousers and nothing else. Cytherea’s limp corpse was propped upright, her fingers dangling over his forearm, the dead-dove whiteness of her face half covered by his own. His palm supported the exhausted lily stem of her neck, where no join was visible - God must have made her whole before he’d preserved her - and the press of his skin was so gentle that it left no mark. I was used to seeing him training, was so familiar with his hands in any number of violent attitudes, and had not thought them capable of that kind of gentleness.

I’d frozen with the realisation that he was kissing Cytherea’s dead lips, when he said, calmly, back so vulnerably offered to me: “Close the door, and _go away._ ”

I’d closed the door. I’d gone away. And I’d done my very best to wipe the image from my brain. Gideon clearly had some kind of feeling for Cytherea, and I’d killed her. No wonder he despised me, most of the time. The real puzzle was the moments when he seemed not to hate me at all, but to crave my company. I avoided him as much as I could in this enclosed space.

I hated God, but at least I could talk to him. Though, more and more, I didn’t _only_ hate him. He was affable, witty, with an affected humility that was uncomfortably endearing. He’d had a myriad to hone his charisma to cutting sharpness, and he wielded it like a blade. I feared his charm more than I feared Gideon’s spear, or Ianthe’s curse - still unbroken, much to my chagrin - or the Resurrection Beasts I still knew so little about.

So - though I was growing to hate myself for this - as much as I hated him, I also enjoyed his company. More often than not, when he did talk, it was about those lost lyctors. I liked these conversations best, because they required the least effort on my part. All I had to do was make regular noises of interest, and pay enough attention that I could ask a question to bring him back on topic, whenever that curious glint crept into his eyes; the glint which generally prefaced personal questions which I had no intention of answering. 

Today, I’d almost missed my cue. I’d been nodding along gamely as God talked about the time that Mercymorn had thrown a fit about being gifted yet another nude painting by Cyrus and Valancy, and they’d responded by breaking into her rooms, back in Canaan House, and covering each wall in a gigantic, pornographic mural. I found myself wondering whether Silas Octakiseron had known what lurked beneath a scant veil of wallpaper, in the rooms he’d occupied for months. It was this entertaining little aside which had distracted me long enough for the Emperor’s attention to shift.

“Gideon…” he started.

I blurted out the first thing to cross my mind, just to cut him off. Unfortunately, the first thing to cross my mind was: “Were the Saint of Duty and Cytherea… together?”

I know I said I’d done my very best to wipe the image from my brain, but apparently my best wasn’t that good. I’d always prided myself on being able to not think about things, but it took the vast majority of my resources to put you far enough from my mind that I could - sort of - function. So here we were. 

God laughed uproariously at my question. “Goodness no!” he said, once he’d caught his breath. “The closest thing to interest that Gideon ever showed in anybody was in Pyrrha, and in the criminals he hunted. When he kicked that edenite commander out an airlock, it was like seeing a man on his wedding day. Not exactly romance though… Over ten thousand years I’ve known that man, and he is _legendarily_ unamorous. I have watched six other Lyctors carry out a myriad’s worth of inadvisable love affairs with one another, because it is a very long time to be alone, but never him. He was unassailable. Everyone liked her, _he_ liked her, but not like that.”

And then he got that gleam again, the curious edge that revealed the wolf within his sheep’s clothing. _“The commander!”_ he muttered to himself, with an air of _eureka!_

“Gideon,” he said with a mildness I did not trust. “I never did ask how you got your name.”

He _had_ asked. He’d asked a lot of times. Each time, though, I’d managed to deflect it, distract him. This time, the sharp hunger in his eyes told me that there would be no equivocation.

I took a deep breath.


	73. Twelve

Though outwardly your life settled into a routine, and one more comfortable than you could ever have expected, that comfort could not touch you. You _hated_. You burned with hatred, seethed with it, were consumed utterly by it. You hated God and you hated the Ninth, and most of all you hated yourself. At the nexus of this hatred bloomed an obsession; you were going to open the Locked Tomb.

You needed to see what it had all been for; the suffering, the cost. You needed to know if it had been worth it. That old impulse, back again, and this time the Reverend Daughter would not be here to save you from the consequences of it. The strangers who had stolen you from Canaan House and slaughtered their way through Drearburh had failed at this very same task, but you were undaunted by this. They’d had your blood; you had your blood, but also your power - a Lyctor’s power - and a hatred which felt huge enough to destroy galaxies.

Each morning, after the secundarius bell had rung, and the first service of the day had been conducted, you puppeted your father back to his private chambers for ‘silent reflection’, and you went down to the tomb. You told Ortus and Aiglamene that you were working to repair the wards which had been broken and make safe the tomb which had come so perilously close to being breached. You thought that Ortus, at least, believed you. You were almost certain that Aiglamene knew you lied, but if she did, she made no attempt to stop you. Each day, you spent hours trying to break the final ward, roll away the rock, and enter the tomb.

You spilled pints and gallons of blood, expended great gouts of energy, and to no avail. So you tried more subtlety. Seeing the warp and weft of the bindings around the tomb in your necromantic vision as fine cord and razor wire, you pulled, trying to find the right entry point to unravel this gordian knot of power. All it left you with was metaphorically cut and bloody fingers, and a throbbing headache.

Day after day you threw yourself at this exercise in futility, hatred spurring you on past all reason. You broke yourself again, and again, like a wave crashing against the shore, but this rock would not be moved, or even eroded into sand by your efforts.

Your frustration and exhaustion made you sloppy. One afternoon with Aiglamene, you missed a block - a simple, basic block, one of the first you’d learned, one even an infant could manage - and her sword bit deep into your shoulder. You winced, but did not let yourself cry out, feeling it bury itself in your clavicle. Aiglamene worked the blade loose from the bone with an effort, and you healed instantly, though your nerves kept jangling with the memory of pain for some minutes afterwards.

“I taught you better than this,” Aiglamene said, and you opened your mouth to admit your error, but before you could, she continued: “And I’m not talking about missing that block. I’m talking about why you missed it.”

“I’m tired…” you started, but she cut you off again.

“No. You don’t get sloppy when you’re tired, you get more dangerous. I’ve seen you exhausted" - she scowled at this - "and you fought better than that. You’re not tired, you’re emotional.”

You were annoyed with her proclamation, having endured years of Aiglamene criticising your meticulous footwork, your perfect parries and thrusts, saying, always, _it’s not enough to fight - you have to find something to fight for._

“You always said emotions were an asset!”

“Emotions are a weapon, an important one. But you have to know how to use them, Harrow, or they’ll use you. Right now, you might as well be holding that sword by the blade, and brandishing the hilt at me; you’re cutting yourself to shreds, and practically inviting me to strike the killing blow and put you out of your misery. You aren’t thinking. Whatever it is you’re doing down in the tomb - no, don’t tell me. If I _know_ , I’ll have to stop you - you won’t get very far like this. I know you’re hurting; don’t let it make you stupid.”

She was right, and you knew it, but you didn’t like it. It wasn’t that you weren’t used to hearing uncomfortable truths from Aiglamene - she’d never been one to mince words - but since returning to Drearburh and donning the mantle of leader of the House, even only behind the scenes, you’d become somewhat accustomed to deference. Like a starving man presented with a feast, it was too easy to enjoy the power after years of powerlessness, to let it make you feel untouchable.

In a lot of ways, you still thought you _were_ untouchable. The worst had happened to you, after all. But then, the worst had happened to you over and over again; each time you thought that life could not dredge up any greater quantity of misery, and each time you’d been wrong. Surely now, though, surely this, _this_ had to be rock bottom. The only thing you had left to lose, you’d thought, was your life - and it was not a life you were particularly attached to. This made you reckless and careless, and - Aiglamene was right - sloppy. You should have known better.

You were distracted that afternoon, as you went over the books, updated the ledgers, and sat, hidden away in the next room, as your father-puppet heard the petitions of his people. You were more distracted, still, when holding the evening mass. You felt bogged down in the petty minutiae of leadership, and wondered when the Reverend Daughter had ever found time for all her hobbies. You’d always resented her for the freedoms you thought she had, and assumed that she had been neglectful in her duties. Now you thought back to the dark circles under her caged, trapped-seeming eyes, and saw that same expression in her eyes still, only now those eyes were in your face.

She’d done her duty, you saw now. The ledgers were completely and carefully maintained, though her handwriting often crabbed and slanted with exhaustion. Everything you now did, with Ortus and Aiglamene to help you, she’d done almost single-handedly, and you found that your respect for her was just as uncomfortable to discover, and acknowledge, as your love had been. The feckless, lackadaisical, frivolous Gideon you’d hated for years had never existed, and you’d wasted years that you could have spent getting to know the real woman trapped under the weight of your assumptions.

That night, when you should have been sleeping, you instead crept down to the library. Early on, you’d refused to sleep, unable to bear your dreams of her. You’d stayed up studying books on anatomy, and worked out how to tinker with your hypothalamus, your pituitary, how to keep yourself awake on a cocktail of coffee and cortisol. You’d lasted six days before your overtaxed brain had failed you; your father had collapsed during a service when you forgot entirely which tendons controlled the legs. Aiglamene had put you to bed, and slept in your bedroom, lying on the cold ground before the door so that you couldn’t leave without waking her.

That had been the thing to make you give in. Not the painful spectacle of Aiglamene hauling herself, laboriously, to her feet each morning, or how stiff and uncomfortable she clearly was, trying to sleep on the floor - it was the memory of another person who had slept before your door, once, because she’d considered exhaustion and pain (a broken rib, if you hadn’t been mistaken) to be a small price to pay, to know that you’d be there when she woke. The memory was too painful, and so you’d made a pact; Aiglamene would take to her bed only when you slept in yours. This was the first time you’d broken that promise, feigning sleep until she left.

You’d been lazy, and foolish. Aiglamene was right - you’d been blinded by your emotions. What would Palamedes have said? The ward on the tomb had stood for almost a myriad. You’d been trying to break it with blood and power, and you’d missed the essential component - your mind. And so you pulled out every book you could find on wards, on blood magic, even the diaries of tombkeepers past and their annotations of their own wards, and you brought them back to your room and started studying. When you were done, you concealed the books in the bottom of your wardrobe, and slept at last, for a few scant hours. If you dreamed of her, you were too exhausted to remember it, when morning came.


	74. Thirteen

We had food, water, shelter, even a modicum of company - coming from the Ninth, these were none of them things I took for granted. That said, there were a few necessities I lacked. Safety, for one. I was still vulnerable in a way the other lyctors weren’t - my energies hadn’t stabilised, so while they remained voids to me, absences in my perception so profound that with my eyes shut I wouldn’t know I wasn’t alone on the Mithraeum, they could each read me just as if I were an ordinary human. I remembered the Cohort soldiers on the _Erebos_ , how each one was an open book of fleshy secrets, how much I could tell from the feeling of tension in their muscles, the pace of their beating hearts, each gland, each organ whispering to me. I did not like the knowledge that the Saint of Duty would be able to sense the cortisol which spiked in me each time I caught sight of him. I liked even less what Ianthe might be inferring from my body’s responses.

Look, Harrow, don’t judge. Besides, it’s your fault, really. I loathe her, I do, but making me a Lyctor at the ripe old age of eighteen, you’d inadvertently sentenced me to eternal puberty, and Ianthe was the only person here who wasn’t about ten thousand years older than me. Whatever I thought of her, my hormones had her pegged as _‘the only viable option’_.

That was one reason to avoid her.

Another was that I still hadn’t managed to break her curse. I needed more blood, but even with whatever she’d done to her brain, she wasn’t an idiot - she’d been too careful. So that was two problems; how to level the playing field between myself and the other lyctors, and how to break Ianthe’s curse. And then there was a suspicion I’d been nursing since my last meeting with Teacher, and needed desperately to confirm.

I had just the solution.

Several times a week, Teacher would gather us all together for a communal meal. The rest of the time we fended for ourselves, with varying degrees of skill - I’d learned pretty quickly not to help myself to any of Ianthe’s leftovers. If carbon and sodium had been able to kill a Lyctor, that stuff would have been deadly - but Teacher liked us to pay lip service to his game of happy families every now and then. He arrived at each of those meals looking disheveled and stressed from the cooking, and so I decided to give him a break. I offered to make dinner. Honestly, I don’t think he could have been more pleased if I’d single-handedly dispatched the remaining RBs, found the missing-presumed-dead Saints of Joy and Patience, and scrounged up an actual personality for Ianthe.

I spent a week preparing, consulting recipe books, practicing each dish over and over, and eating the evidence - for quality assurance purposes, of course. The books had a dizzying array of suggestions of different courses, but I decided to keep things simple - a starter, a main, a dessert. When the day came, I told Teacher of my menu, and asked him to suggest a wine to accompany each course; I didn’t actually care about whether a merlot or a cabernet would be more appropriate with this course or that, and I didn’t much care for wine, but it could only go in my favour if everyone’s faculties were a little blunted tonight, and Teacher did so love to impart knowledge, whether it was knowledge I cared about or not. I tried to play the adoring acolyte as much as I could stand to; he responded by falling solidly into the role of _indulgent father_ , which was useful, but which I also craved more than I was ready to admit to. It had not yet occurred to me to wonder who was manipulating whom in this particular dynamic.

As he studied bottle after bottle, muttering to me about _‘oaky undertones’_ and _‘smooth finishes’_ in what may as well have been a different language for all I understood, he frequently mentioned Augustine, who had apparently been the most expert of them all when it came to wine. Teacher fussed so long over his selections that I began to regret asking him, watching the hours tick by and knowing how much I had to do, but finally he made his choices.

As soon as he left me, I hurried to the kitchen to get to work, spreading recipe books open on the counter, and cleaning out my weights and measures. I picked through the warehouse-sized supply rooms for the ingredients I needed - and, for a long time, I locked myself in the bathroom, to do what I had to do.

Four hours later, Ianthe, Teacher, and the Saint of Duty all came in to the dining room, where I’d set the huge table with silverware and wine glasses. The bottles of white were properly chilled, and the reds had been decanted hours ago, to give them time to breathe - I’d found one of Augustine’s books on wine amongst the recipe books, and it had been very clear on both points.

First, the starter. Pate. It wasn’t something I was terribly fond of - in my time perusing the supply rooms for snacks I’d discovered a multitude of things which could be spread in thick, satisfying layers over slices of bread. Honey and jam remained my favourites - sugar had been such a rarity on the Ninth that I found it hard to resist now, and it was a good job that I could fill my own cavities - though peanut butter was also good. Pate would have been my least favourite, had it not been for the little jars labelled innocuously with ‘Marmite’ and bedecked in a deceptively bright and friendly shade of red, full of a viscous substance that looked - and tasted - like the kitchens back on Drearburh had left the huge pots of salty black sauce to bubble and reduce until it took on the consistency of sludge, then sprinkled in some sugar in a feeble attempt to mask the taste.

Still, I allowed myself a small smile as I watched my dinner companions eat and saw the effects already beginning to take hold. Satisfied, I turned my attention to the second of my plans for this evening. Fixing an expression of interest on my face, I turned to Teacher and said: “Did you have dinner parties back on Canaan House, when you were still there? The hall where we ate was huge - it must have been very grand.”

Teacher kept up the conversation almost single-handedly, barring my questions, and the very occasional interjection from the Saint of Duty, who was taciturn and green-eyed tonight, no sunglasses in sight. I knew that subtlety was not my strongest suit, and so I was careful to hold back from prompting the conversation too obviously in the direction I wanted it to go, letting it meander freely until the second course had been served - a soup which the older Gideon ate at a stolid, uninterested, mechanical pace. I had noticed at previous dinners that he did not like particular vegetables, so I had put them all in. Deprived of solid choices, he was mostly drinking stock.

“What about the cavaliers?” I asked, finally. “You talk about the other lyctors all the time, but I feel like I don’t know anything at all about their cavaliers.”

I ignored the acid glares from both Ianthe and Gideon. If Teacher noticed them, he ignored them too. Then I nodded and _hmm?_ ’ed through tales of Valancy and her paintings, Nigella’s fussy eating habits, Alfred’s many cravats (whatever cravats are. I didn’t care enough to ask). And still, I tried to be patient, listening to Teacher, and the wet, semi-ashamed sounds of people eating soup, ignoring the way that Ianthe’s nose dripped blood into her bowl each time the conversation stumbled towards her own cavalier, turning the broth ruddy and dark. To my relief, she ate anyway, apparently unbothered by drinking her own blood. Well, she _was_ from the Third.

Finally, when we were all eating cake, and Ianthe was attempting to make eye contact with me while making quite the production of licking icing from her fingers, I turned to the Saint of Duty, and asked after _his_ cavalier, who was as-yet unmentioned.

I felt his muscles tense. Harrow, I _felt_ it! I’d gone into this with no idea if my plan would work, and it had. I had spent hours blending my own liver cells into the pate - with enough chicken liver and white wine to mask the flavour - diluting my bone marrow in the soup, even substituting the chicken eggs and butter in the cake recipe for my blood and lipid cells. These parts of me were even now dispersing silently through the tissues of Gideon, Ianthe, and Teacher, lighting up their voids with tiny points of light. They flowed with the Saint of Duty's pulse, letting me gauge his heart rate, and bunched when his muscles flexed. It was a poor substitute for the detailed perception I knew they had of me, but it was _something_ , and more importantly, no one had caught me doing it.

The temptation to exert my new power was strong, but I fought it back. All my work would be for nothing if the others found out what I’d done, and purged themselves of the foreign cells. I wasn’t sure how long they would last; my cells were a lyctor’s cells, and I’d been miraculously regenerative, even before becoming a lyctor, but still, I didn’t hold out much hope that they’d persist indefinitely. I’d just have to volunteer to cook dinner again, regularly.

Gideon blinked furiously as I asked after his cavalier. For a moment, between blinks, I thought I saw a flash of those deep brown eyes I’d seen once before, but then he blinked again and they were green.

 _“Another topic,”_ he said.

Teacher, however, had been drinking his wine without seeming to notice how often I topped up his glass. On the very edges of my awareness, I could just make out his dilated capillaries, and knew that he was rapidly approaching drunkenness. I had noticed at previous dinners that a single glass of wine made him introspective, and two made him melancholy. Three, however, rendered him congenial, garrulous, inclined to speak freely on topics he’d otherwise avoid. By my count, he was now five glasses in. Knowing how he longed for some sort of familial unity among his lyctors, and having suspected that Gideon would avoid talking about his cavalier, as he always did, I pressed my advantage.

“I’m sorry, elder brother,” I said - God loved it when we called each other _‘brother’_ or _‘sister’_. “I only want to get to know you better; I didn’t mean to cause you any upset. Could you tell me something else, then? Maybe about your work? Teacher was telling me about an edenite commander you spent years tracking down - it must have been a thrilling chase.”

There - I had set my trap, and baited it. Gideon had already refused me once and God could hardly resist an opportunity for bonding between us. Ianthe? Ianthe would play along, just to see Gideon squirm; she loved to see people suffer. 

"Go _on,_ Gideon," God said, and it was difficult to suppress my grin of victory. Begrudgingly, Gideon told the tale.

He was not one of life’s natural storytellers, and had to be nudged and encouraged onwards at every turn. I got the sense that there were very large gaps in what he relayed, but I got enough of the story to be satisfied. By the time the last bottle of wine was empty, I had my answer. 

A short while later, after we’d all retired for the night, I left my room, sword in hand. I could feel, from the tracery of my cells within each body, that Ianthe, God, and Gideon were all in their rooms, where I wanted them. I knocked on the Saint of Duty’s door, and was surprised to find that it swung open beneath my knuckles.

He sat in a chair, clearly waiting for me. Though I had my sword drawn, he didn’t react when I came in. He didn’t even stand, or reach for a weapon of his own. I walked closer, and he looked at me through brown eyes so bright they were almost red.

“You killed my mother.” I said.

“Gideon… I am your mother.”


	75. Fourteen

“What?” I asked, too dumbfounded to say anything more witty. The point of my blade sagged for a moment, as the surprise hit me, but then I steadied it, bringing it back up, poised to strike. “You aren’t my mother. My mother died.”

“I’m your other mother. My name is Pyrrha - but I think you suspected that already, didn’t you?”

“I thought there was something going on with Gideon, but not… hang on, sorry, could we go back to the part where you’re my _mother?_ That’s sort of the bit I’m having trouble with. Whatever weird deal you’ve got going on with your necro kind of isn’t something I really give a shit about right now.”

“Commander Wake - your mother - and I were together for almost two years before you were born; Gideon was sent to chase down a criminal, and instead we found something else completely. It was… messy. You probably don’t need to know the explicit details…”

“Uh, no. _Please_ no.”

“But before you were born, I tried to persuade Wake to come away with me. I thought we could leave this whole stupid war behind us, and be a family. Gideon wouldn’t have liked it, but he’d have come around. Eventually.”

“Then why did you throw us out of an airlock?”

“That was Gideon - and I didn’t know that her suit was so low on power. The Ninth House has barely any gravity, until you hit the artificial stuff on the surface - if her suit had been fully charged, you’d both have survived the fall. I was going to tell John that she’d died, and then swing back to the Ninth to pick you both up, but when I got there, they told me you both died, and showed me her body. I… went away for a while after that. I didn’t resurface until I found you on Canaan House.”

“You came back for me?” I tried to harden my heart; whatever she said now, she hadn’t been there. It was going to take more than this frank and dry-eyed explanation to make me trust her. But still - the thought of having a mother, after all this time, it was more tempting than I could say.

“If you want the proof, then here you go.” She reached into a pocket, pulled out the sunglasses, and held them out to me. “I left these on the Ninth when they said you were dead; I planned to bury myself in Gideon and never surface again, so I wasn’t going to need them anymore and… they were the only thing I had to give you.” Her voice cracked a bit, at this last, and it became suddenly clear to me that she wasn’t unmoved, she was just trying to hide the depth of her feelings so they wouldn’t overwhelm her. I learned to recognise that from watching you, Harrow.

I sheathed my sword, and went to her, taking the sunglasses, looking with new eyes at the P which had always been carved into the inside of the hinge. Then I handed them back to her.

“I thought you’d want them,” she said, looking just the slightest bit hurt.

“I do… but I want a mother more than I want my sunglasses back, and you need them. Will you - can you - stay?”

“I can’t be here all the time; but I’ll do what I can. Gideon - of _course_ she named you for the only thing we ever had in common - I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I give you my word that I’ll always be here for you, from this day forwards, if you want me.”

“I do want you.” She tucked the glasses back into the pocket they’d come from, and reached out. I let her take my hands.

“How are you still here?” I asked. That wasn’t what I wanted to know, though. What I was really asking was: could _you_ still be here, Harrow?

“We compartmentalised from the Eightfold Word, just like Ianthe and her cav - though I’m an accident, and he took more from me than Ianthe did from hers. I was able to go underground, even from him.”

“Could Harrow…?” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, especially not when she looked into my eyes, with hers brimming with sorrow, and shook her head.

“I don’t think so. I had good reason to hide from my necromancer. Your girl wouldn’t do that - I can tell you loved her.”

“I dream of her. Harrow - my cavalier - most nights. All of them, really. Do you think that ever stops?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted Pyrrha to say yes or no to this, but the answer I got was the worst one possible; worse than I’d imagined.

“Gideon still dreams about me. He always has. But… it’s been a long time. Almost a myriad. Memory drifts. The _me_ he dreams of isn’t much like me at all, any more.”

“You see his dreams?”

“I see everything when I’m under, unless I go very deep. He doesn’t see me though - I’ve looked back through his mind and whenever I’m here, he’s just gone. Nowhere at all. More gone than if he was dead. If he wasn’t so worried that he was losing his mind, I think he’d find it restful. Ten thousand years is a terribly long time.”

I thought about the implications of that. If Gideon (Old) was worried that his blackouts were a sign he was going mad, then that meant…

“He doesn’t know about you?”

She shook her head. At my look of surprise, she said: “Loyalty always was his besetting crime.”

“Loyalty isn’t a crime!”

“That depends entirely on who you’re loyal to,” she sighed. “Gideon’s loyalty is to John, first and foremost. Mine was too, once. If Gideon knew about me, he’d tell John, and well… you see what’s happening with Ianthe. It would be the same for you, if I didn’t step in every time he came for you.”

“What?” I was more than confused. “What’s happening with Ianthe? You mean, how she fuckled her brain? I didn’t think G- _John -_ knew about that.” It felt strange to call him that, but stranger still to call him God with Pyrrha there. And I still hated to call him Teacher. I missed the real Teacher too much, still.

“Huh?” It was Pyrrha’s turn to be confused. “No, I mean the way he has Gideon trying to kill her. Kill you both, actually. John thinks that either mortal peril will spur you to integrate properly, or if it doesn’t, then you’re too defective to be of use to him.”

“Gideon is trying to _kill Ianthe?”_

“Why do you think she’s always hanging around you? She’s an unmitigated asshole, but she’s not _stupid._ Gideon doesn’t get violent when you’re around - because I won’t let him - so if she wants to be safe, she has to be where you are.”

I was feeling a confusing heap of emotions right then. On top of my base, childish, longing to crawl into Pyrrha’s lap and let her hold me, as no mother ever had before, I still felt wary, unwilling to trust her just yet. And then, to hear that Gideon (bastard) had been told to kill me? That John (utter bastard) had told him to try to kill me and Ianthe both, and that the only reason Ianthe was always there was because when she was alone, she had some old fuck trying to kill her? Was I pleased that she apparently didn’t desire my company after all? Or embarrassed that I’d made the assumption I had?

“Gideon’s been trying to kill me?”

“He hates you, I’m afraid. I was careful, until your mother came along, to only ever surface when he was asleep. When I met Wake… she made me careless. I wasn’t content with snatched, fleeting moments of darkness. I might have been dead for millennia, but she gave me something to live for. He loved her too, I think, but he never trusted her; he thought she was to blame for his blackouts. In a way he was right. After she died, they stopped, because I went away. Now you’re here, and the spitting image of her, and he’s losing time, left and right. Ianthe, he’s pushing towards integration, but you? You, he will kill. He thinks he’s lost his mind, and killing you will bring it back.”

“Then… we have to tell him. We have to explain! I mean… you said that Gideon and my other mother…” I didn’t want to think about it. I really didn’t want to think about it, but some thoughts happen whether you want them or not. “So in a way, isn’t he my father, too?”

She opened her mouth, an _um actually…_ expression on her face, and I discovered that I had no appetite for stories of my parents’ relative proficiencies with prophylaxis. If Pyrrha said she was my mother, then that was enough for me. I didn’t need - or want - to know the logistics of it.

“We can’t tell him. He’s had almost ten thousand years under John’s influence. All the others doubted, over the years. All the others lost their faith, one way or another, but never him. After I died, John was all he had. If John tells him to destroy me - or destroy us both - then he will.”

“So… this has to be a secret?” she nodded.

“Wait,” I said, something suddenly occurring to me. “It was you who stole my sword, back on the _Erebos_ , wasn’t it? Not him? Why did you get rid of my mother, if you loved her?”

“I didn’t,” she smiled, a smug, secretive smile. “She always was such a _dick_. The sword was empty before I got my hands on it; she took over the lieutenant I sent to fetch the sword, and got herself a new body.”

“She’s possessing a lieutenant on the _Erebos_?” I didn’t like John. I was pretty sure I hated his empire too, but it was vaguely disconcerting to think of an enemy commander at the heart of the empire’s military.

“Gideon, you’re smarter than this. You must be, with the mothers you have.”

“I - _oh._ ”

My mother wasn’t on the _Erebos_ , she was here on the Mithraeum. _Close the door and go away…_ Gideon hadn’t been kissing Cytherea’s corpse - _Pyrrha_ had been kissing my mother’s _host_. Was there something romantic about my two dead mothers; their love conquering death itself? Maybe... but now we were back in territory I did not want to be in. How did normal people deal with the concept of their parents fucking? Now that I wasn’t an orphan any more, I was discovering that being an orphan had included some advantages I’d never truly appreciated.

“Can I meet her?”

For the first time, Pyrrha looked away, no longer meeting my eyes. “Give it a little time, love. She wasn’t quite as excited by motherhood as I was - that’s an understatement, but she had a rough time of it. She carried you under her heart, threw up every morning her first trimester, felt you kick her organs out of the way to make more room to grow. She gave you a nickname, her whole pregnancy - she called you Bomb. She never said why, but I think it was the digestive pyrotechnics. Pregnancy was hard on her - and she died so soon after you were born. She never learned to love you.”

“Oh.”

“But her revenant stayed with you this whole time. Revenants just don’t last that long, but she always was something special.” - every time Pyrrha talked about my other mother, the dreamy, faraway look in her eyes was not the slightest bit chaste, and I hated it - “I know she’ll come around. Just give me time.”

We talked for hours more. Pyrrha wanted to know everything about me, and unlike John’s incessant questions, I found I _wanted_ to answer hers - maybe because she wanted to know about _you_ , as well. Telling her stories about you, about us - it was the closest I’d ever come to having you with me again.


	76. Fifteen

Eventually, I was yawning, and Pyrrha said, regretfully, that she ought to let Gideon’s body sleep, or he’d suffer for it in the morning. Their relationship confused me. She loved him - or said she did - and certainly, the stories she’d told me, about their time together on Canaan House before she’d died backed that up. But when she talked about Wake, she described her like something incredible, unstoppable, a force of nature. She only spoke of Gideon with sadness, like he wasn’t an equal, but something to mourn; someone she’d failed to protect; a sweetness irretrievably soured. She said that she didn’t like what a myriad alone had done to him, but I suspected it wasn’t quite that, but a myriad alone _with John._ I’d felt the force of his charisma, and I could only imagine what it would make of a person, after so long. 

When I left Pyrrha to tenderly tuck Gideon’s body into bed, before relinquishing control of it, I didn’t return to my own rooms, but ended up outside Ianthe’s door. It was almost dawn, and my night’s work was not done.

I’d expected to find her sleeping, but even from the corridor, I could feel the frantic rushing of her blood, the rapid beating of her heart. My cells - not even truly my cells, for they would have been broken open and digested long before making it into her bloodstream, but my thanergetic print remained, claiming the scattered proteins as mine - they were like spys behind enemy lines, and the picture they painted for me was of a body in a state of heightened arousal.

My first thought - that she was _seeing a man about a queen,_ as the Third House euphemism put it - was proven wrong when I let myself map out the position of her body, and its approximate location. She was too low down - lying on the floor. Underneath her bed, perhaps? And lying in rigid terror, arms by her sides, her right hand clenched spasmodically around something the approximate size and shape of a rapier hilt.

Well, my plan wouldn’t work if she was awake. I’d been hoping to sneak into her rooms and burst a few blood vessels - in the nose, perhaps - and then sneak away with the materials I needed to break her curse and Ianthe none the wiser.

I banged on her door, and heard a small, quickly stifled, shriek of terror from within, but no other answer. I banged again, calling through the door; “Ianthe, it’s me.”

A few minutes later, she opened the door. She would have presented a very believable facsimile of someone who’d just been awoken from a deep sleep, except for two things: I’d felt it, as her pores opened to reabsorb the fear-sweat which had slicked her skin, but she needn’t have bothered; the room itself still stank of dread, and if I looked carefully, I could just about make out the pommel of her rapier, tucked underneath the bed.

“Ah,” she drawled. “Gideon-the-lesser. To what do I owe the honour of your visit? Late night booty call? Or did you have a sad little dream about your sad little cavalier, and need me to kiss it all better?”

It took all the self control I had not to pull out my sword and put it through her heart.

“I’m here to make a deal.” I said flatly. I walked into the room, and decided to sit in the chair at the dresser. It was the only chair in the room - she’d have to either sit on the bed, or the floor - either way, I’d have the height advantage. She _could_ choose to stand, I supposed, but I could feel her muscles trembling with the exhaustion which followed terror, and suspected she’d opt for sitting down, rather than risk appearing weak. 

She moved to the bed, but instead of sitting, she lounged - I really should have expected as much - her ill-fitting nightgown revealing acres of pasty, washed out skin. It was rucked up nearly to her hip, and the neckline plunged in a way which should have been dramatic, but in Ianthe’s case, exposed more of rib than breast.

I tried to appear unaffected by the sight - and mostly I was, honest, Harrow! - knowing that either looking away, or looking too closely, would reveal some weakness for Ianthe to exploit. Which is to say, if I happened to let my eyes glance over her bared flesh, it was for purely tactical reasons.

"Well?" she prompted, once she'd arranged herself to her satisfaction (and my hopefully not-too-obvious discomfort). "What is this 'deal' you've come to offer me?"

"Blood." I said. "I want a sample of your blood" - a thought crossed my mind - "and you don't get to talk about Harrow. Ever again."

"Blood? Gideon, darling, I am the greatest necromancer the Third has ever produced. I know a thousand and one things you could do with my blood, and none of them end well for me. What could you possibly have to offer that would be worth me giving you that kind of power?"

"Protection," I said. She scoffed, but I met her gaze unflinching, and she looked away first. "Besides, I'm just a silly little bone nun, right? _You_ might know a thousand and one things to do with blood, but what do I know?"

"If I gave you my blood, you great buffoon, the the thing I'd most need protection from would be you. No deal."

"I can protect you from the Saint of Duty. Or - refuse me, and I'll leave you to his tender mercies every time you fall asleep. I know you aren't sleeping at night. Don't trust your wards, eh 'greatest necromancer the Third has ever produced'?"

"I hate you," she said, but it was idle, half-hearted. Noise to fill the time while she pondered my offer.

"I hate you too," I replied with perfect honesty, in the same disinterested tone she'd used.

"I don't need you."

"I don't need you either."

And then her body betrayed her. She yawned, and I knew I'd won. I saw in her eyes that she knew it too.

"Very well. But I'm not sleeping in your rooms; they'll bore me into a coma and I'll never wake up again. We stay in my rooms, sleep in shifts."

"Agreed" - I didn't have much to lose by giving up my home turf, and the paintings in her room were quite compelling - "oh, and one more thing..."

"What?" she asked, suspiciously.

"I need you to cut my arm off."

***

Ianthe agreed instantly. Should I have been worried that she was so willing to dismember me? It didn't matter. The arm had to go, at any cost. I'd been trying to do it myself, but I couldn't get the right angle to take it off in a single blow, and it healed up as quickly as I could hack at it. It pained me, but I needed help. I was not growing accustomed to the arm; instead, it bothered me more each day. The join fizzed and itched and felt like it was full up with acid. For a time, I'd worried that the arm was encroaching on the rest of me, slowly replacing my own flesh with pale skin and paler hair. I'd marked the join with ink, however, and it stayed as it was. The parasitic limb was not taking over the rest of me, even if it felt like it was. It didn't function properly, either. I had been learning to do almost everything with my left hand, and I barely practiced with my sword at all. It needed to go.

"On the floor," she said.

"Fuck off, Tridentarius."

"Don't be an ass. I'm not having your blood all over my bed, and you'll flinch and ruin my aim if you're standing."

"I won't"

"You might. Or did you want to give me an excuse to miss, and take your head off instead?"

So I took off my shirt - trying to be as brash and unselfconscious in my bared skin as she had been in hers. I still wore my bandeau, at least; I'd take the hassle of rinsing blood out of it over the ignominy of Ianthe's eyes on my naked breasts. I lay down on the floor. She pulled her nightdress up to mid-thigh, and straddled me, sitting on my stomach, the bones of her pelvis digging painfully into me. I couldn't quite tell if she was wearing anything underneath the nightdress, and resolved not to think about it - I could always peel the skin from my stomach later, and replace it.

She ripped a swatch of yellow lace from her skirt, and compressed it into a tight cylinder. The tearing sound made me startle.

"To bite down on," she explained, and I grudgingly allowed her to press the lace between my teeth. It tasted of her, of the sour saltiness of her sweat, and I nearly spat it out, but I had to save my energies to deal with my arm and I didn't know if my tongue would grow back of its own accord, if I bit it off. John had told us that lyctors could not regrow limbs. He'd failed to explain exactly what constituted a 'limb' in this context. My arm would not regrow on its own - that's why they'd given me the transplanted one. Would a severed tongue heal as a stump? What about a finger, or a thumb? I didn't want to find out.

Ianthe looked down at me, considering. She may not have benefited from lyctoral healing, but she’d seen enough examples of it to know that the only a total and instantaneous sundering would do the job. She reached behind her and took out a long knife that I hadn’t even noticed she was wearing; it must have been strapped to the small of her back, and I’d been so concerned with looking - or not looking - at her legs and chest that I’d missed it. 

I cautioned myself, once again, not to underestimate Ianthe. She’d figured out lyctorhood unaided, and without access to any of the theorem stones. She’d completed the process, not once, but twice, and then managed to alter her own brain to preserve Coronabeth’s spirit (though, this latter was less impressive, now I’d met Pyrrha). She might not be a full lyctor, but that didn’t mean she was impotent. 

I recognised Tern’s main-gauche, his trident knife, a long blade from which two other blades would spring at the press of some hidden mechanism; she flicked that mechanism now, and with a _snickt_ they burst out like a firework, two hard points of gleaming steel. She flicked it again, and the blades went _snickt_ back into their housing.

She pressed her palm to the meat of my shoulder, thumb and index finger bracketing the joint, and considered the angle for a long moment, before she thrust the blade home with exacting precision, forcing it straight into the gleno-humeral joint, severing tendons and efficiently parting humerus from scapula. I bit down on the wad of lace in my mouth, and every fibre of my being bent toward not screaming or throwing up, but the worst pain was yet to come. With a final _snickt,_ she released the twin blades of the trident knife, severing the arm completely. 

The blood came like a spring tide over my front, and I felt it soak into my clothes. It hurt, yes, but there was an overwhelming relief, too. I had just enough presence of mind to cauterise the meat, pinching the blood vessels closed, and skeletonising all of the shed blood; no sense giving Ianthe any ammunition to use against me (though, if she’d only known it, she already had some of my blood, wormed deep inside her like a sleeper agent).

With my left arm, I pushed her off me, and heaved myself into a sitting position. I’d have preferred to do this next bit alone, but I wasn’t going to go wandering the corridors one-armed; I trusted Pyrrha - whether I should or not - but I didn’t know how precise her hold was over Gideon. If he came across me in this weakened state… well. Best to do this here. Whether I wanted to or not.

I reached across my body to press my fingers against where the humeral head had been. I had to hurry - already skin was growing to close over the wound. Instead of allowing the stump to heal as it was, I covered over the gap with spongiform bone to give myself a platform to work on. I coaxed fine webby strands of red marrow from the wing of bone that girdled my shoulder, and from that - from minute osteoblastic grit - from the mazelike netting of the bone that swaddled the sponge and the marrow - I was remade.

The humerus was child’s play, and I took genuine pleasure in socketing it into the lovely cup of the radius, the forked embrace of the ulna. My trochlea I sculpted while holding my breath, easing it into its wet white housing. 

If not for the pain, the hand would have been almost an indulgence. The skeleton recalled itself. I did not need to know so intimately the lover’s knot of carpal bones - the long tooth of the lunate, the jutting promontory of the trapezium - nor did I need to know the arch of the distal phalange, the shaft, the base. I felt Ianthe’s eyes on me as the new bone sprang avidly to meet my fingers. My role with the bones was more guide than artist - topological resonance saw to that. The artistry would come at this point, as I bent and twisted that resonance to fit my needs, and I braced myself, knowing that this would hurt.

I knew my limits. I understood what to do with the bones innately, but for all my work with Palamedes, I still could not claim perfect expertise over the softer tissues. The bone would have to suffice. I blistered it in tendons only where I thought it was necessary for range of motion, and bubbled nerves into that shining periosteum where nerves had never been before. Not a full complement, but just enough. Bone would call to bone, and nerve would call to brain. When I trailed my fingers up that new trunk of electrified humerus, I almost spat out the chunk of lace, but stopped myself. I would still need it, for this last…

I pressed my left palm to my right shoulder and I plugged the new arm in, and allowed myself a single sob at the pain of it. 

What was left at the end was not an arm. It was a construct: a sectioned skeleton, defleshed. When Ianthe sat down beside me, I was chilly with sweat and pleasantly tired, as though I had run a good distance. The aftermath of the pain was already fading from me, leaving me with only peace; the first true comfort I’d felt since I’d woken on the _Erebos._ The construct was not truly an arm, but it was _mine._

I raised it up to the light: the warm electric lamplight made the naked arm bones an iridescent gold. The old arm lay on the carpet, abandoned and dead, looking a little sorry for itself. I got to my feet, and kicked it away with distaste. 

“You didn’t bother about the meat?” Ianthe asked, curiously.

“No - but I’ve got some feeling in it. Most of the nervous glands are in my elbow.” 

I drew my sword, interested to see Ianthe flinch away, just a little, before she caught herself. I realised that I would need a mat of tissue or cartilage on the palmar bones, to hold the sword, like a glove, and wove something cartilaginous temporary into place until the hilt sat securely in my hand. I stepped back to give myself space, and tried a few experimental swings, a strike, a block, trying to gauge the new weight in an arm substantially lighter than the one on the floor. It would be an adjustment, but an adjustment I was confident I could make, where I had never been able to adjust to the transplanted arm.

“It’s almost dawn,” I said. “You might as well get a few hours’ sleep.”

“What about you?” she asked - but from the way her eyes darted over to the bed, I could tell it wouldn’t take much of a push. 

“I’ll keep watch. I want to train a bit more. Call it a gesture of good faith - and when you wake up, I get your blood.”

Not that it mattered. I now had free access to Ianthe sleeping - I’d get the blood, whether she gave it to me or not, but the idea that she still had something I needed seemed to be the encouragement it took to get her into bed. 

Neither of us mentioned how long she spent staring at me through a veil of lashes, before she slept. Ianthe was a pervert, but I was too happy to have my sword in my hands - _my_ hands - again, to let her distract me from my training.


	77. Sixteen

When understanding came, it struck you like a blow. No amount of studying had brought you any closer to opening the tomb, though you’d scoured the library shelves, and even your parents’ rooms, hoping to find some secret volume, a tome of forbidden knowledge to help.

Then, one night as you were removing your paint, you slipped, and met your own eyes in the mirror. Met _her_ eyes, glowing gold in your face, and you remembered. _“Lipochrome. Recessive.”_

The people who had taken you had no way of knowing that you were the heir to the Tombkeeper line. So why had they taken you? They’d _seen your eyes_ , and believed your blood could open the tomb. Only it hadn’t been your eyes they’d seen at all, had it?

No one had ever known where she had come from, the miracle child who had fallen from the sky to save the Ninth. The girl with the golden eyes.

You laughed; everything they’d needed, everything _you_ needed to open the tomb was right here. It had been here all along! You picked up her arm and held it to you, pressing your lips to the calloused palm, and then twining your fingers with hers. You climbed into bed - no studying tonight - and held her close, knowing it would be the last time.

You were not distracted, when morning came, or impatient. You were not nervous, or apprehensive, or even anticipatory. You were filled with a calm certainty, the unwavering faith that even beyond death, she had one last miracle to give.

When the time was upon you, you made your way to the tomb with quiet solemnity. You didn’t sob, but tears flowed freely down your cheeks as you laid the arm down before the rock, and turned your power on it. The flesh sagged as you transmuted bone to blood, then muscle and tendon and subcutaneous fat, and then, finally, you turned her skin to blood, and what had once been an arm exploded in a single ecstatic gout of sanguine glory.

And then the thanergy cascade; you had become practiced at this, and it took almost no concentration to gather up the whole of your thanergy reserves, and focus them down to a single point, trusting that her power would flow back to you. She always came back for you.

And the rock rolled away.

Behind it was water, like a moat around the tomb itself - no, not a moat, more like an ocean. You watched, and saw that the waters moved with a tide which shouldn’t exist, lapping against the ground not far from where you stood. 

You waded in, and discovered that the waters were ice cold - would probably have frozen over if the water had been fresh, but it was as salty as the seas around Canaan House had been. 

The sepulchre itself was small. You shivered slightly, coming out of the water, until you thought to warm your core from within, pushing your blood cells around until the cold no longer touched you. 

The tomb was made of stone and ice. You put your hand to it, and despite your warmth, the ice did not melt. The stone was even colder. Inside, in the dark…

There was a girl. 

Or the corpse of one. She was packed in the ice, frozen solid, with a sword on her breast, her hands wrapped around the blade. The sword was a two-hander, like the one Aiglamene was teaching you to wield. Like the one your beloved had carried, and in that moment, this seemed like a sign, like a blessing. 

You looked closer, beyond the sword, and saw the chains around her wrists, coming out of her grave, going down into holes by each side of the tomb. There were chains on her ankles, and chains around her throat. 

For the first time, it occurred to you to see your Lyctorhood as not a burden, but a blessing. You decided that you were content to live forever, with the power your love had bestowed upon you. You would live forever; just in case the body in the tomb ever woke up.

You kneeled beside the tomb, head worshipfully bowed, and at last, you talked of her. The Reverend Daughter, your adept, your first friend and your only love. You could not talk to Ortus, and you could not talk to Aiglamene, but it felt right to speak to the frozen corpse of the Locked Tomb. 

In my dream, Harrow, I felt cold. As cold as though I were really there, in that frozen tomb. I was terrified that Pyrrha was right, and even love was not enough to fix the memory of you perfectly in my mind. I was so scared that already I was losing you, and the _you_ of my dreams was more fiction than memory. _This isn't how it happens._

It wasn’t just the idea that you’d open the tomb - though you’d always been so proper, so pious, you’d always kept your faith even when I’d lost what little I had to start with - but this whole dream felt like a petty, sordid fantasy. It wasn’t just your face, washed clean of paint by the salt-water or your clothing clinging wetly to each contour of your body until you seemed more lewd than you ever had, any of the times I’d seen you naked. 

It was the way you spoke about me, the things you said. 

Sure, you’d told me you loved me, but there’d been no time! I’d had no chance to ask you to explain, and ‘love’ could cover a multitude of sins. Did you love me as one friend loves another? As a cavalier loves their adept? As a dutiful daughter of a House loves its heir? It could have been any of these. 

What it could not have been, could never have been, was the kind of love my dreaming self conjured you speaking of now. 

In the same way that my previous dreams had taken my memories and wrapped them around you - you pouring over Drearburh’s ledgers late at night, as I once had, you training with Aiglamene, carrying my sword, sleeping in my bed - now I heard you speak of loving me as I had loved you.

You spoke of watching me, whenever you thought I wasn’t looking, of a thirst which could only be slaked with the sight of me. You told the frozen corpse of the Locked Tomb how your heart had been in your mouth, that first night sharing my bed, how terrified you’d been that I’d read your desire in each breath, each careful, gentle touch. 

You spoke of sparring with me, each thrust like a kiss, each parry a caress. You talked about me like I was really the saint I was now condemned to be, not a fraud or a failure. You glossed over my every act of stupidity with kind intentions; the way I’d nearly (maybe actually) killed myself trying to heal a man who would be dead anyway, less than a month later. How I’d tossed the key to the Sixth House Lyctor laboratory into the sea, giving up untold knowledge for the sake of idiotic sentiment. 

Harrow, I’m sorry. I should be ashamed for twisting you in my mind into this parody of yourself. If I could control my dreams, I would. But I can’t.

In my dreams, you don’t just love me. You’re _in love_ with me. You call me 'beloved' You call me _her,_ like there's no need for specificity, because I'm the only _she_ who could ever matter. You call me _yours… your_ Reverend Daughter. _Your_ adept. Your _love._ You call me anything but Gideon, as though my name hurts too much to speak or even think. 

In my dreams, I’m yours. And that’s how I know that these dreams are nothing more than my fantasies, because Harrow - I _gave_ you my flesh. I gave you my end. I gave you my power. I gave you myself. I did it all while knowing I’d do it all again, without hesitation, because all I ever needed was for you to need me back. 

I gave you my life, and you didn’t even want it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna be another little hiatus now we’re at the end of Act Two. See y’all in a few weeks!


End file.
